Guild Wars 2

So, I’ve considered posting this for a couple days now. I tend to lurk rather than posting. I realize this will likely fall on deaf ears, but after this weekend, I feel like it really needs to be said.

The attitude on the forums, and the response from the community over the past week (and even before that) is appalling. Every new thread is created to somehow belittle or bash the Anet dev team, or to negatively criticize every aspect of the game (whether part of the new update or not). And it isn’t just in General – it’s happening in PvP, in WvW, in the Profession forums, all of them. Is this criticism valid? Certainly – there are threads created for the exact purpose of collecting that information (and no, we don’t need to keep making 9 different threads on the same topic). But the tone of that criticism has reached an all-time low, and it’s turned the forum into a toxic mess. We’re no longer in the territory of constructive, positive discussion that a forum like this is here to encourage.

The general consensus of the community appears to be one where we expect the dev team to be chained to their desks 24/7, fixing every mistake and catering to every whim of any player who feels like our gameplay has somehow been diminished. I mean, just look around – you’ll find it in almost every new thread that’s been created this week. How does this kind of feedback – the whining, the complaining, the bashing, the lack of patience, the anger – actually help the game or promote any kind of meaningful discussion? Everyone seems to be shocked at the lack of responses from the dev team about issues – is it really any wonder why? If I were them, I wouldn’t respond to anything either, considering the community won’t be happy with whatever they have to say (or even if its what they want to hear).

Have there been problems this week? Certainly. Could things have been rolled out differently? Probably. But in no way does that excuse how this community has reacted. We dare say the Anet team can’t have a bloody holiday weekend to themselves? Of course they can! Who are you to say they don’t deserve one? (And there are threads where this exact statement is happening).

Lets use the Megaserver as an example. For those complaining about the megaservers, have you even considered that releasing this update this week, in this way, is intended? The Megaserver system is a BIG deal. And the devs have said repeatedly that its an ongoing system. I mean, the update isn’t even a week old! How do you expect the dev team to make any meaningful changes to the system to improve things, when they don’t even have enough data yet to determine what those changes should be? It’s called patience, and this community could use a huge dose of it.

Altogether, I know this thread isn’t going to deter the community’s reaction to the new content. I know it’s not going to correct anything. But I’m hoping that, if you support the dev team, their hard work, and their efforts to give us something great to play, you’ll post in here and let them know.

I love the new updates, and I know that I for one can’t wait to see what’s coming for us next

I, too, believe the MegaServer implementation just needs time to adjust its algorithms. What comes to mind is ‘teaching’ voice recognition software your vocal nuances. It doesn’t happen within minutes. It takes time.

I appreciate the Dev team, and all they give us. They are human, and errors and such come with being so. I think that is something to keep in mind. They work hard to create this game for us, and always seem quite enthusiastic about being able to share it with us.

Thank you, ArenaNet.

Resk.6412:

So, I’ve considered posting this for a couple days now. I tend to lurk rather than posting. I realize this will likely fall on deaf ears, but after this weekend, I feel like it really needs to be said.

The attitude on the forums, and the response from the community over the past week (and even before that) is appalling. Every new thread is created to somehow belittle or bash the Anet dev team, or to negatively criticize every aspect of the game (whether part of the new update or not). And it isn’t just in General – it’s happening in PvP, in WvW, in the Profession forums, all of them. Is this criticism valid? Certainly – there are threads created for the exact purpose of collecting that information (and no, we don’t need to keep making 9 different threads on the same topic). But the tone of that criticism has reached an all-time low, and it’s turned the forum into a toxic mess. We’re no longer in the territory of constructive, positive discussion that a forum like this is here to encourage.

The general consensus of the community appears to be one where we expect the dev team to be chained to their desks 24/7, fixing every mistake and catering to every whim of any player who feels like our gameplay has somehow been diminished. I mean, just look around – you’ll find it in almost every new thread that’s been created this week. How does this kind of feedback – the whining, the complaining, the bashing, the lack of patience, the anger – actually help the game or promote any kind of meaningful discussion? Everyone seems to be shocked at the lack of responses from the dev team about issues – is it really any wonder why? If I were them, I wouldn’t respond to anything either, considering the community won’t be happy with whatever they have to say (or even if its what they want to hear).

Have there been problems this week? Certainly. Could things have been rolled out differently? Probably. But in no way does that excuse how this community has reacted. We dare say the Anet team can’t have a bloody holiday weekend to themselves? Of course they can! Who are you to say they don’t deserve one? (And there are threads where this exact statement is happening).

Lets use the Megaserver as an example. For those complaining about the megaservers, have you even considered that releasing this update this week, in this way, is intended? The Megaserver system is a BIG deal. And the devs have said repeatedly that its an ongoing system. I mean, the update isn’t even a week old! How do you expect the dev team to make any meaningful changes to the system to improve things, when they don’t even have enough data yet to determine what those changes should be? It’s called patience, and this community could use a huge dose of it.

Altogether, I know this thread isn’t going to deter the community’s reaction to the new content. I know it’s not going to correct anything. But I’m hoping that, if you support the dev team, their hard work, and their efforts to give us something great to play, you’ll post in here and let them know.

I love the new updates, and I know that I for one can’t wait to see what’s coming for us next

complaints are caused by dissatisfaction, a lot of people are dissatisfied. These systems touched major parts of the game, Its not really surprising.

As for expecting a high level tone, thats a skill that most people do not have. When many people get angry or dissatisfied, they dont become more tactful/understanding.
Also, anet needs to hear some of this negative feedback, because apparently they didnt realize a lot of these solutions would cause a lot of these problems. Either that or they prefer a wait and see approach in either case, they need to see these pages of toxic mess to try to solve the problems

I can’t help but agree with this. I love this game, and I happen to have found a guild of good-hearted, positive players. But the forums are tough to handle some days.

As you said, patience is really the key here. No patch is perfect the moment it is implemented. There are things that they just very simply won’t find. This is even the case in big name console release titles (lolz @ Skyrim’s shopkeepers. If you played the game at release, you know what I mean. This being an example.). It just takes time for the dev team to find a way to patch it, then make the fix live. This is the case with megaservers. There is a lot that needs to be worked out. And it will happen. It is the job of the players to provide input and feedback. That’s what the forums are for. But as the OP said, it has crossed the line into criticism and angry whining.

Just as we level up a character hoping for it to be an unregulated death machine, so too does the game need to be approached the same way. It started out, it grew. And it’s growing again. There WILL be growing pains, but it is not necessary to flame and rage at the first sign of trouble.

Getting off my soapbox now… gosh OP, I’ve had that on my mind for a while as well. Nice to see someone decide to address it.

/2cents

Honestly don’t know what you expect, this is typical to every major update for all games (can’t really comment on communities outside games, but I imagine the sports communities must get pretty vile during their seasons), not just MMOs. If you were to use this as a metric to judge the entire community then you might as well give up and get off the internet forever, because that means every online community is utterly terrible.

Now I’m not saying this is particularly acceptable or laudable behavior, but consider for a moment what you’re doing: you’re basically bashing the community because you didn’t like their behavior over the past week and basically ignoring their behavior the rest of the time, how does that make you any better than the people bashing Anet for the mistakes they made in the update while ignoring all the good things they did the rest of the time?

Poor implementation is poor implementation. It’s worse when people warned them long before the update of many of the issues that we see now. Anet does not listen. That makes people even more upset.

If you look back to the threads that were created within the first 6 months after launch, most were pretty civil. As time went on, Anet responses became fewer and fewer. Countless bugs and exploits that have existed since the betas are still not fixed. New systems were introduced that no one asked for nor wanted, and each were filled with several bugs that still haven’t been fixed. Suggestions that would actually help improve the game went entirely ignored, or worse, the exact opposite was done. The CDI’s were the same way.

Look back at the massive thread concerning ascended gear. People overwhelmingly HATED the idea. What did they do? They added more Ascended gear, with an even bigger grind than the jewelry.

Look at the WvW CDI’s. the first one listed Population imbalance as the biggest problem in WvW, with the commander tags being the second biggest issue. What did they do? They added incentive to superstack further, and haven’t done anything with the commander tags in the FOUR months since the CDI.

In the week leading up to this patch, Anet was told what problems would present themselves, were offered solutions on how to avoid it, and ignored that. Now we’re seeing exactly what people were concerned with happening, and as usual, Anet is nowhere to be found to deal with the mess they made. A mess they could have easily avoided, but chose not to.

This is the result of those sort of things. To lay this on the community is to completely ignore what has actually been happening over the past year and a half. This is large scale customer dissatisfaction, with ample reason for it. This one is on Anet, and Anet alone. If they hadn’t completely mismanaged what was the most promising MMO on the market, none of this would be happening. Instead, they caved, tried to turn it into yet another WoW-clone, and neglected their paying customers to do so. If people are angry with Anet, it’s because Anet actually deserves it. No other company on the planet would expect to behave this way and still be in business, let alone continue to neglect and look down upon their customer base.

Truth be told, this community is owed an apology from Anet, at the very least.

Will.6210:

Players who are satisfied rarely post about how satisfied they are. Forums generally represent a vocal minority.

Actually…. that’s a myth.

The people who post on the forums are the most passionate about the game. Good companies understand how customer feedback works and pay attention. Bad companies believe the myth and wonder why their customer base is shrinking.

I always thought the GW2 community was one of the best I have seen. There are actually worst communities out there, and the negative attitudes aren’t as bad compared to lets say LoL. I have read so many thought out and well constructed topics on issues that someone my not like in the past and, some of the good ones even go as far as putting in simple solutions that they may think would help instead of just whining. Unfortunately though, these topics either go unseen or no one knows if the dev took a look at their topic. So this community is far from bad, it’s just frustrating for some who are being punished by GW2 for playing a certain way in game.

Phantom.8130:

Will.6210:

Players who are satisfied rarely post about how satisfied they are. Forums generally represent a vocal minority.

Actually…. that’s a myth.

The people who post on the forums are the most passionate about the game. Good companies understand how customer feedback works and pay attention. Bad companies believe the myth and wonder why their customer base is shrinking.

Fair enough. The reality still doesn’t seem as catastrophic as some things on the forum make it seem, though. There are definitely problems, but I for one haven’t experienced anything super anger-inducing since the patch. Oh well.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Poor implementation is poor implementation. It’s worse when people warned them long before the update of many of the issues that we see now. Anet does not listen. That makes people even more upset.

QFT, +1

Phantom.8130:

Will.6210:

Players who are satisfied rarely post about how satisfied they are. Forums generally represent a vocal minority.

Actually…. that’s a myth.

The people who post on the forums are the most passionate about the game. Good companies understand how customer feedback works and pay attention. Bad companies believe the myth and wonder why their customer base is shrinking.

Same here

Resk.6412:

So, I’ve considered posting this for a couple days now. I tend to lurk rather than posting. I realize this will likely fall on deaf ears, but after this weekend, I feel like it really needs to be said.

snip

Been like this since the start really. In fact it’s like this in a lot of other gaming development forums too. It really doesn’t matter what game or how good it is, there is always a very vocal group of negativity pushers.

Phantom.8130:

No other company on the planet would expect to behave this way and still be in business, let alone continue to neglect and look down upon their customer base.

Actually, the grass isn’t greener on the other side, much of your complaints can be applied to most other gaming companies these days. Personally I can say that my experience with Anet’s communication is still leagues above Bioware/EA and Cryptic/Perfect World’s.

It could be worse. :P At least there is a decent level of moderation involved vs many other forums.

Hopefully new players read these threads and conclude it’s just a bunch of dissatisfied people with different concerns, which may or not be valid, rather than take every negative post dead seriously. While some of the better put, negative feedback merits attention, many threads (or to be fair, some posts within said threads) are just angry rants.

One of the silliest complaints on forums is that every player’s favorite Profession is being “nerfed to the ground”, while every other Profession is “OP”.

As for this patch, surely things won’t be smooth from the get go. I couldn’t even chat when I logged in on patch day (which was quickly fixed on a subsequent patch.) And of course, it’s natural to resist change (“don’t fix it if it ain’t broken!”), but IMHO, these changes do benefit the game in the long run, for the most part.

Only change that seems strange or “?” is the time distance between some of the bigger events. Seemed to be put together so that it will encourage larger guilds to open up the missions, but may be a bit too much for me (IMHO), especially considering the amount of players on smaller guilds with irregular job schedules. There should be a decent chance for every player to do these events (perhaps a 3 to 4 hour span instead.)

Well anet hypes things up way too much as a lot of their content they release hasn’t been up to said hype.

Also seems like whenever they update or add content there are so many obvious bugs that should not have passed QA if they even have a QA dept.

Pandaman.4758:

Phantom.8130:

No other company on the planet would expect to behave this way and still be in business, let alone continue to neglect and look down upon their customer base.

Actually, the grass isn’t greener on the other side, much of your complaints can be applied to most other gaming companies these days. Personally I can say that my experience with Anet’s communication is still leagues above Bioware/EA and Cryptic/Perfect World’s.

Actually, Bioware was pretty good about things in NWN. EA, however, shouldn’t ever be allowed to even touch anything video game related. All they’ve shown that they’re able to do is destroy an IP.

That being said, however, imagine id McDonalds was ignoring thousands of complaints of food poisoning from their customers. Or if Ford was ignoring thousands of complaints about steering wheels falling off. And that those companies exhibited a pattern of ignoring customer complaints for a year and a half. Burger King and Chevy would be delighted.

You can’t seriously be comparing possible loss of life to the updates in a video game. Truly?

The last thing we need is to turn the official forums into an echo chamber, like tumblr or some reddit sub forums were any dissent/outside opinion is culled / mocked.

There really just hasn’t been many praise worthy things, sure this patch was good, and changes are going to upset people (mega servers etc…), but this is the best we have almost 2 years after launch?

-QoL changes
-Living Story content
-Fractals
- 5 or so new maps?
- 2 world bosses

compared to what GW1 had in this amount of time or any other game… GW2 seems to be in maintenance mode, just doing enough to keep people interested in buying things on the cash shop then getting bored and quitting.

The same thing happens time and again with online games.

1. People love the game, the company makes sweeping changes to something a lot of people love.
2. Huge amounts of complaints flood the forums but result in nothing being done (yes some just complain for the love of complaining). No company is going to come out and say “we messed up and are going to undo huge amounts of the changes”.
3. Opposing side who love the changes come on the forums to defend and tell the haters “well leave then if you don’t like it”.
4. Haters leave the game for another.
5. 3-6 months down the line the forum starts seeing “How do we attract more players to the game” “I can’t find people to play with” posts.
6. Hardcore lovers of the game remain and play in increasingly small circles until the company tries something along the lines of server merges (Anet preempting this with Megaservers?) which buys them a little longer or fails completely

And of course the community suffers from the division during the whole process.

Phantom.8130:

That being said, however, imagine if McDonalds was ignoring thousands of complaints of the food tasting too salty from their customers. Or if Ford was ignoring thousands of complaints about their seats being too uncomfortable during long drives. And that those companies exhibited a pattern of ignoring customer complaints for a year and a half. Burger King and Chevy would be delighted.

Fixed that for you.

Star Ace.5207:

One of the silliest complaints on forums is that every player’s favorite Profession is being “nerfed to the ground”, while every other Profession is “OP”.

This I agree with you 100% on. I think it reached a boiling point when Ranger Pets were declared to be OP. (Because them charging blindly into AoE and dying apparently can’t be countered….) The classes were actually pretty well balanced around launch, but a lot of people hadn’t adapted their playstyle from other MMOs to GW2’s combat, and that started the whole ball rolling. Then again, every class is considered OP in every MMO, except the one the poster happens to be playing. However, they started tinkering with the classes, based on the countless “x is OP, please nerf” threads, which really translated to “I got killed by an x, please help me win”. Which….. just spurned more threads in the same vein.

Phantom.8130:

Will.6210:

Players who are satisfied rarely post about how satisfied they are. Forums generally represent a vocal minority.

Actually…. that’s a myth.

The people who post on the forums are the most passionate about the game. Good companies understand how customer feedback works and pay attention. Bad companies believe the myth and wonder why their customer base is shrinking.

Can you explain this? It sounds like a myth. Also, “the most passionate about the game” is by definition not representative of the majority.

Alice.8694:

Phantom.8130:

That being said, however, imagine if McDonalds was ignoring thousands of complaints of the food tasting too salty from their customers. Or if Ford was ignoring thousands of complaints about their seats being too uncomfortable during long drives. And that those companies exhibited a pattern of ignoring customer complaints for a year and a half. Burger King and Chevy would be delighted.

Fixed that for you.

No. You really didn’t. Countless bugs and exploits have been reported, and have gone ignored since the betas. Countless reports of hacking have gone ignored. Countless reports of griefing have been ignored. These aren’t trivial issues.

Problem is a lot of feedback that they get is not good feedback. Bad feedback, well about the only thing they can do with that is debate it internally if it is really a problem or if someone is just being emotional or unwilling to adapt to change and count the players.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-to-Give-Good-Feedback/

Also people who have positive feedback to not generally post as they are commonly met with contention. Not something that the poster was looking for. They just want to give a opinion not be told how wrong they are.

Phantom.8130:

Pandaman.4758:

Phantom.8130:

No other company on the planet would expect to behave this way and still be in business, let alone continue to neglect and look down upon their customer base.

Actually, the grass isn’t greener on the other side, much of your complaints can be applied to most other gaming companies these days. Personally I can say that my experience with Anet’s communication is still leagues above Bioware/EA and Cryptic/Perfect World’s.

Actually, Bioware was pretty good about things in NWN. EA, however, shouldn’t ever be allowed to even touch anything video game related. All they’ve shown that they’re able to do is destroy an IP.

That being said, however, imagine id McDonalds was ignoring thousands of complaints of food poisoning from their customers. Or if Ford was ignoring thousands of complaints about steering wheels falling off. And that those companies exhibited a pattern of ignoring customer complaints for a year and a half. Burger King and Chevy would be delighted.

Those comparisons don’t hold water, because you can’t prove that the current patch equals the same kind of problems for those companies. Your perception of the patch is not everybody else’s. Not everyone is getting as poisoned as you do, nor getting their steering wheels off their GW2 cars, much less for a “year and a half” (you are being intentionally dramatic and basically a sort of “proof” of what the OP was talking about.)

Give all the feedback you want, but remember https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-to-Give-Good-Feedback and especially:

•Find the balance between logic and emotion.
Be logical, but not emotionless. Be passionate, but not so full of passion that you can’t hear a good counterargument.

And:

•Turn down the negative tone.
There’s a difference between being critical and being negative. Learn this difference and avoid the latter. Select words that show you’ve thought about the effects of the problem rather than simply presenting your gut reaction.
NO: “I can’t see around that ridiculous ball of puke-colored light.”
YES: "The light around this character obstructs the view from most camera angles and is an unpleasant shade of yellow.
•No one knows best.
Avoid taking an inflexible position or positioning yourself as the authority. Proposals should be accepted on their merits and practicality. Disagreements should be settled after careful consideration. Using forceful, pretentious language hurts your point. If your argument is “You need to do it my way because I know best,” then we probably won’t because it seems you don’t.

I hope I am not offending you, and you are most certainly NOT the only one that posts in similar fashion. Best of luck, and I hope any game changes in the future are more to your liking.

Phantom.8130:

Star Ace.5207:

One of the silliest complaints on forums is that every player’s favorite Profession is being “nerfed to the ground”, while every other Profession is “OP”.

This I agree with you 100% on. I think it reached a boiling point when Ranger Pets were declared to be OP. (Because them charging blindly into AoE and dying apparently can’t be countered….) The classes were actually pretty well balanced around launch, but a lot of people hadn’t adapted their playstyle from other MMOs to GW2’s combat, and that started the whole ball rolling. Then again, every class is considered OP in every MMO, except the one the poster happens to be playing. However, they started tinkering with the classes, based on the countless “x is OP, please nerf” threads, which really translated to “I got killed by an x, please help me win”. Which….. just spurned more threads in the same vein.

Sadly, I doubt the threads themselves will ever disappear. People don’t like to lose, and don’t like to be told it’s their fault when they lose.

ANet does sometimes listen “too much”, which may cause these problems at times, but then again, that’s just my humble opinion.

Stephen McBeaven.5640:

Phantom.8130:

Will.6210:

Players who are satisfied rarely post about how satisfied they are. Forums generally represent a vocal minority.

Actually…. that’s a myth.

The people who post on the forums are the most passionate about the game. Good companies understand how customer feedback works and pay attention. Bad companies believe the myth and wonder why their customer base is shrinking.

Can you explain this? It sounds like a myth. Also, “the most passionate about the game” is by definition not representative of the majority.

It’s actually basic sociology. If someone was neutral about something, they wouldn’t give any feedback about it either way. They wouldn’t care, so they wouldn’t be bothered. People have to go out of their way to post on the forums. That requires conscious effort. People only put conscious effort into something they care about. Those who post on the forums have made the conscious effort and have gone out of their way to post here about something they feel passionately about, instead of just quietly playing the game.

The most valuable thing any company can get is feedback from their customers. Negative feedback is also far more important than positive feedback, because it shows the company the areas in which they need to improve. Better product, more customers, more money. If they ignore that negative feedback, or actively steer into the skid, the result is a bad product, with fewer and fewer customers wanting to buy it, less and less money every day, possibly ending in bankruptcy.

I logged in just to comment on this… I come on the forums quite frequently but I rarely post; I’m also a lurker, just like the OP.

I completely agree with the sentiment that these forums are a fairly toxic place. I understand how it can be frustrating to voice an opinion and feel that it hasn’t been heard, but that’s no excuse for rudeness. The customer support people that we deal with directly here on these forums are typically people who are not involved in the development process; they are here to help with problems and they likely forward concerns and complaints to the appropriate departments but there’s little else that they can do. If there’s a thousand posts about a specific issue or one, it doesn’t matter; it’s still going to take the same amount of time for Arenanet to fix the issue.

The development cycle for a game of this magnitude is a long one. GW2 has only been out for a little under two years; personally I think that they’ve accomplished quite a lot in that amount of time. The Living Story shouldn’t be written off as a minor update; it’s a massive task on the development side to release content every two weeks, let alone one that gives permanent changes to the world. As a player who got a little bit bored, I was stoked to see something new to do that frequently.

TL;DR version: There’s a difference between legitimate complaint and unnecessary whinging. And there’s a lot of unnecessary whinging on these forums (which isn’t that unique as far as MMO or game forums go in general). :p

Phantom.8130:

Stephen McBeaven.5640:

Phantom.8130:

Will.6210:

Players who are satisfied rarely post about how satisfied they are. Forums generally represent a vocal minority.

Actually…. that’s a myth.

The people who post on the forums are the most passionate about the game. Good companies understand how customer feedback works and pay attention. Bad companies believe the myth and wonder why their customer base is shrinking.

Can you explain this? It sounds like a myth. Also, “the most passionate about the game” is by definition not representative of the majority.

It’s actually basic sociology. If someone was neutral about something, they wouldn’t give any feedback about it either way. They wouldn’t care, so they wouldn’t be bothered. People have to go out of their way to post on the forums. That requires conscious effort. People only put conscious effort into something they care about. Those who post on the forums have made the conscious effort and have gone out of their way to post here about something they feel passionately about, instead of just quietly playing the game.

The most valuable thing any company can get is feedback from their customers. Negative feedback is also far more important than positive feedback, because it shows the company the areas in which they need to improve. Better product, more customers, more money. If they ignore that negative feedback, or actively steer into the skid, the result is a bad product, with fewer and fewer customers wanting to buy it, less and less money every day, possibly ending in bankruptcy.

Except for those that love to play the ‘Forum Game’. Lol.

Complaints made about “Anet” are commonly about those with the function of direction and decision making. Not the total employee base. The majority of those employed by Anet are blameless, and I am sure there are employees just as disappointed in decisions made as some consumers are. I am also quite sure that some of these decisions were made in spite of deep reservations/opposition internally. We will never actually know.

Odds are strong that there are employees reading these comments, shaking their heads, and thinking.. “I told them this would happen”.

People in business who make the decisions are compensated to take the heat, and should. Calling out those individuals on a forum thread is a very big no no, however, and so “Anet” is used. In truth, Anet.. as a whole.. is not being criticized. Only the few that can actually direct the game are. Deservedly, in my opinion.

Phantom.8130:

The most valuable thing any company can get is feedback from their customers. Negative feedback is also far more important than positive feedback, because it shows the company the areas in which they need to improve. Better product, more customers, more money. If they ignore that negative feedback, or actively steer into the skid, the result is a bad product, with fewer and fewer customers wanting to buy it, less and less money every day, possibly ending in bankruptcy.

Yes however if that feedback is not delivered in a good way it is hard to prioritize and understand exactly what they poster is trying to say. If the majority of the post is filled with emotion the actual message is often lost and all someone reads is “I am upset about X”. When the player may be trying to get across is “This is why I am upset about X.” Even better feedback would be “This is what I am upset about X feature. Please implement Y instead. Here are the positives and negatives that I think my solution has.”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-to-Give-Good-Feedback/

Phantom.8130:

It’s actually basic sociology. If someone was neutral about something, they wouldn’t give any feedback about it either way. They wouldn’t care, so they wouldn’t be bothered. People have to go out of their way to post on the forums. That requires conscious effort. People only put conscious effort into something they care about. Those who post on the forums have made the conscious effort and have gone out of their way to post here about something they feel passionately about, instead of just quietly playing the game.

This in no way accounts for human bias, well you did say basic I suppose.

Phantom.8130:

Alice.8694:

Phantom.8130:

That being said, however, imagine if McDonalds was ignoring thousands of complaints of the food tasting too salty from their customers. Or if Ford was ignoring thousands of complaints about their seats being too uncomfortable during long drives. And that those companies exhibited a pattern of ignoring customer complaints for a year and a half. Burger King and Chevy would be delighted.

Fixed that for you.

No. You really didn’t. Countless bugs and exploits have been reported, and have gone ignored since the betas. Countless reports of hacking have gone ignored. Countless reports of griefing have been ignored. These aren’t trivial issues.

How many people do you think have suffered sickness or death because of an exploit or a bug in GW2 ?

No offense sir but, as annoying as they can be, no issue in a video game is really anything other than a bit trivial.

Phantom.8130:

Stephen McBeaven.5640:

Phantom.8130:

Will.6210:

Players who are satisfied rarely post about how satisfied they are. Forums generally represent a vocal minority.

Actually…. that’s a myth.

The people who post on the forums are the most passionate about the game. Good companies understand how customer feedback works and pay attention. Bad companies believe the myth and wonder why their customer base is shrinking.

Can you explain this? It sounds like a myth. Also, “the most passionate about the game” is by definition not representative of the majority.

It’s actually basic sociology. If someone was neutral about something, they wouldn’t give any feedback about it either way. They wouldn’t care, so they wouldn’t be bothered. People have to go out of their way to post on the forums. That requires conscious effort. People only put conscious effort into something they care about. Those who post on the forums have made the conscious effort and have gone out of their way to post here about something they feel passionately about, instead of just quietly playing the game.

The most valuable thing any company can get is feedback from their customers. Negative feedback is also far more important than positive feedback, because it shows the company the areas in which they need to improve. Better product, more customers, more money. If they ignore that negative feedback, or actively steer into the skid, the result is a bad product, with fewer and fewer customers wanting to buy it, less and less money every day, possibly ending in bankruptcy.

I just want to chime in here; I am quite passionate about the game but I often don’t really post on the forums. Does that mean I’m not as passionate as someone who does post? I know people who love the game who never even look at the forums because they don’t really like forums. I’m sure not all people who post here are as passionate as you give them credit for… some people just like to kitten. XD

Also, I don’t think Arenanet is ignoring all complaints or negative feedback. I think some issues just take longer than others to fix with their given development timelines.

Ashen.2907:

Phantom.8130:

Alice.8694:

Phantom.8130:

That being said, however, imagine if McDonalds was ignoring thousands of complaints of the food tasting too salty from their customers. Or if Ford was ignoring thousands of complaints about their seats being too uncomfortable during long drives. And that those companies exhibited a pattern of ignoring customer complaints for a year and a half. Burger King and Chevy would be delighted.

Fixed that for you.

No. You really didn’t. Countless bugs and exploits have been reported, and have gone ignored since the betas. Countless reports of hacking have gone ignored. Countless reports of griefing have been ignored. These aren’t trivial issues.

How many people do you think have suffered sickness or death because of an exploit or a bug in GW2 ?

No offense sir but, as annoying as they can be, no issue in a video game is really anything other than a bit trivial.

Ok then, imagine if Hoover ignored complaints that their vacuums were blowing dirt out instead of sucking it in. The point is a faulty product, with complaints of those faults being ignored. Competitors lick their lips when they see that happening.

tldr : I am complaining about the community that is complaining about the game.

Phantom.8130:

Ashen.2907:

Phantom.8130:

Alice.8694:

Phantom.8130:

That being said, however, imagine if McDonalds was ignoring thousands of complaints of the food tasting too salty from their customers. Or if Ford was ignoring thousands of complaints about their seats being too uncomfortable during long drives. And that those companies exhibited a pattern of ignoring customer complaints for a year and a half. Burger King and Chevy would be delighted.

Fixed that for you.

No. You really didn’t. Countless bugs and exploits have been reported, and have gone ignored since the betas. Countless reports of hacking have gone ignored. Countless reports of griefing have been ignored. These aren’t trivial issues.

How many people do you think have suffered sickness or death because of an exploit or a bug in GW2 ?

No offense sir but, as annoying as they can be, no issue in a video game is really anything other than a bit trivial.

Ok then, imagine if Hoover ignored complaints that their vacuums were blowing dirt out instead of sucking it in. The point is a faulty product, with complaints of those faults being ignored. Competitors lick their lips when they see that happening.

I understood your point. Agree with it actually. I just wanted the message to not be lost or dismissed out of hand due to accusations of hyperbole.

anzenketh.3759:

Phantom.8130:

The most valuable thing any company can get is feedback from their customers. Negative feedback is also far more important than positive feedback, because it shows the company the areas in which they need to improve. Better product, more customers, more money. If they ignore that negative feedback, or actively steer into the skid, the result is a bad product, with fewer and fewer customers wanting to buy it, less and less money every day, possibly ending in bankruptcy.

Yes however if that feedback is not delivered in a good way it is hard to prioritize and understand exactly what they poster is trying to say. If the majority of the post is filled with emotion the actual message is often lost and all someone reads is “I am upset about X”. When the player may be trying to get across is “This is why I am upset about X.” Even better feedback would be “This is what I am upset about X feature. Please implement Y instead. Here are the positives and negatives that I think my solution has.”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-to-Give-Good-Feedback/

This goes back to what I was saying before. The negative feedback actually started off very constructive As time went on, and the issues remained ignored and unfixed, people grew more and more frustrated, especially as new issues were added (and the negative feedback about those also went unaddressed) and it gradually evolved to this point.

I don’t really think basic negative posts are the issue. Much like other people have stated, not everyone can word their critiques in well meaning neutral posts.

The problem, as I perceive it is the tendency for these negative posts to try and bully the conversation their way. And more so bully the devs into acting on their demands. It’s not uncommon to see the “I hate this and i’m gonna quit and I know many more who will too” kind of comment thrown about.

Equally it’s not uncommon to see these negative posts trying to rally similar negative sentiments in people and completely ignoring actual discussion on the topic.
Kinda like; “I’m kitten and everyone else should be too, don’t question me!”

There was a powerpoint iirc from some dev company that discussed forum posters. He basically said (if my memory serves me correctly) forums are full of “haters” but dont you dare ignore them. Those haters are the ones that find the things that will tell you about the things that will haunt you a year down the line. The forum goers can be used to find trends as they are more vocal.

not paraphrasing anymore

IIRC he said forum users for their game was 2 percent, but those 2 percent showed trends that will emerge months down the line.

something like that.

Adesia.5138:

Phantom.8130:

Stephen McBeaven.5640:

Phantom.8130:

Will.6210:

Players who are satisfied rarely post about how satisfied they are. Forums generally represent a vocal minority.

Actually…. that’s a myth.

The people who post on the forums are the most passionate about the game. Good companies understand how customer feedback works and pay attention. Bad companies believe the myth and wonder why their customer base is shrinking.

Can you explain this? It sounds like a myth. Also, “the most passionate about the game” is by definition not representative of the majority.

It’s actually basic sociology. If someone was neutral about something, they wouldn’t give any feedback about it either way. They wouldn’t care, so they wouldn’t be bothered. People have to go out of their way to post on the forums. That requires conscious effort. People only put conscious effort into something they care about. Those who post on the forums have made the conscious effort and have gone out of their way to post here about something they feel passionately about, instead of just quietly playing the game.

The most valuable thing any company can get is feedback from their customers. Negative feedback is also far more important than positive feedback, because it shows the company the areas in which they need to improve. Better product, more customers, more money. If they ignore that negative feedback, or actively steer into the skid, the result is a bad product, with fewer and fewer customers wanting to buy it, less and less money every day, possibly ending in bankruptcy.

I just want to chime in here; I am quite passionate about the game but I often don’t really post on the forums. Does that mean I’m not as passionate as someone who does post? I know people who love the game who never even look at the forums because they don’t really like forums. I’m sure not all people who post here are as passionate as you give them credit for… some people just like to kitten. XD

Also, I don’t think Arenanet is ignoring all complaints or negative feedback. I think some issues just take longer than others to fix with their given development timelines.

This boils down to issues with wording. There can be very passionate players who don’t post on the forums, but the vast majority of the forum posts come from very passionate players. Of course, there are always trolls and those interested mainly in PvF, but they’re not really the majority. Also bear in mind that just because someone may be passionate about something, that doesn’t mean they they’re actually knowledgeable about it. It just means they’re really into it.

Now, about your last paragraph, all you need to do is take a look through the WvW section to see thing clearly. It doesn’t take a year and a half to fix any individual issue. When a developer is caught in a screenshot glitching through a gate in WvW, and 6 months pass and that gate is still glitched? That’s neglect, pure and simple. Especially when that glitch was reported countless times by countless people, with videos explaining it in detail sent to them before those screenshots ever happened.

If this patch was as amazing as some of you pretend it to be, you’d be playing the game right now and not arguing with a bunch of forum trolls.

Truth be told, every ’positive’ post on here is just vindication for the haters.

Phantom.8130:

Now, about your last paragraph, all you need to do is take a look through the WvW section to see thing clearly. It doesn’t take a year and a half to fix any individual issue. When a developer is caught in a screenshot glitching through a gate in WvW, and 6 months pass and that gate is still glitched? That’s neglect, pure and simple. especially when that glitch was reported countless times by countless people, with videos explaining it in detail sent to them.

As a experiment go to any open source community bug reporting system. Look for reported bugs. Look how many there are. Look how many are unsolved. Look at how many are duplicates. Look at how many are filed incorrectly or are problems that do not even exist anymore. After doing that you can get a idea of why some issue may take 6 months or longer to get resolved. Especially if it is a complex issue that not a single person has no quick solution for.

anzenketh.3759:

Phantom.8130:

Now, about your last paragraph, all you need to do is take a look through the WvW section to see thing clearly. It doesn’t take a year and a half to fix any individual issue. When a developer is caught in a screenshot glitching through a gate in WvW, and 6 months pass and that gate is still glitched? That’s neglect, pure and simple. especially when that glitch was reported countless times by countless people, with videos explaining it in detail sent to them.

As a experiment go to any open source community bug reporting system. Look for reported bugs. Look how many there are. Look how many are unsolved. Look at how many are duplicates. Look at how many are filed incorrectly or are problems that do not even exist anymore. After doing that you can get a idea of why some issue may take 6 months or longer to get resolved. Especially if it is a complex issue that not a single person has no quick solution for.

How many of them have screenshots posted on their official forums of a developer taking advantage of those bugs, where that issue still isn’t resolved 6 months later?

Phantom.8130:

How many of them have screenshots posted on their official forums of a developer taking advantage of those bugs, where that issue still isn’t resolved 6 months later?

My point is it will take as long as it takes. Rather then assume neglect assume it is a difficult problem to solve that they honestly do not have a best solution to fix it right now without the possibility of it causing more problems.

If you know a lot about the issue and have a idea on how to fix it try emailing the exploits at arena.net email address with your suggestion. Perhaps you thought of something that they have not.

There were some very constructive and helpful threads regarding feedback between the time the patch was first announced and the time it got released.
One thing that i witnessed over the last 2 years (since the first beta lauch) was that a lot of similar feedback we gave got totally ignored. Well i for one understand the frustration some of these posters feel afterwards.
The worst thing that happened the last few weeks was that there were no statements at all regarding certain very important issues.
Some people feel ignored now, and when that happens some of them get cranky.
The main problem from my point of view is the lack of information we receive.

All of this has happened before and it will happen again.

Peetee.9406:

If this patch was as amazing as some of you pretend it to be, you’d be playing the game right now and not arguing with a bunch of forum trolls.

Truth be told, every ‘positive’ post on here is just vindication for the haters.

I don’t believe I must play the game 24 hours a day to find a patch pleasing. If that is the criteria, though, then the opposite must be true, as well.

Anyone that is not pleased with the patch must never play the game, else they are hypocrits, no?

^ lol just lol must be atleast one in every game forum

Lets revisit a “negative posting” episode.

Nov 2012 update. “every champion should be guaranteed to drop loot”.

They did not. Players pointed this out. Threads were closed, moved, condensed, ignored. The situation did not change. Players became more negative, more threads were removed, more infractions issued, nothing done about the actual issue.

Finally an official thread for feedback appeared.. “Share your Perceptions etc.” Even then the Official stance was that it was a player “perception” issue.

Eventually, months later, after hundreds of feedback posts, Champs dropped loot.

Players who “complained” about Champs with no loot were blasted by the usual defenders. They were told they had no merit, no proof, no cause to complain. Threads and posts disappeared, the topic got damage control moderation, and still people persisted. End result, the people pointing out that Champs did NOT drop loot were correct.. and the issue was fixed.

It is probably the best practice to deliver feedback to Anet in a non inflammatory manner, but at the same time it is Anets responsibility to look into that feedback without tossing it off as “perception” “toxic posters” " forum complainers" etc.

When a thread gets to several hundred pages, even if you discount every single post that fails to fit “good feedback”, odds are strong the problem is real enough to deal with.