Guild Wars 2

Where are we supposed to post regarding dungeons, fractals and other non living story related PvE? General discussion already fills with threads at an alarming rate.

Should posts about general profession balance, that are not tied to one specific profession only, go into General Discussion?

I maybe reading this wrong, and if I am then ill apologise in advance, but the way im reading it is, you are rolling

•Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

All into the same section like you did with suggestions in general chat, if so, how well did that work out, basically to me this reads as, don’t bother posting your bugs we wont be looking anyway, you seem to be the only Dev/Mod that reads these forums anyway, there are bugs reported in that bugs section months ago that are still ingame today, and you want to consolidate them all into 1 section, just remove the bugs section completely.

Are there any plans to update the forum framework, or simply reorganise the forum sections? I hate how bland it is here, and how many features simply do not work.

Gaile Gray.6029:

spoj.9672:

Where are we supposed to post regarding dungeons, fractals and other non living story related PvE? General discussion already fills with threads at an alarming rate.

General Discussion is correct. With many developers involved in multiple projects, it’s helpful for them to have a main forum to check for input, suggestions, and questions.

Since many more threads will now coexist with others, especially in the General Discussion section, I suggest increasing the amount of threads per page from 30 (to 40? 50?). The threads which go onto the 2nd page are very likely to sink away into the abyss, and the 1st page already has 5 stickies which decreases the amount of visible threads to 25.

Does that mean that the following will be deleted or merge?

- Profession Balance
- Crafting
- Black Lion Trading Co
- Dungeons
- etc

I listed subforum that I use. I understand that some subforum are not really active or too specific. But you get from 44 subforums to 24?

I like the addition of an API subforum, but that’s pretty hardcore consolidation.

This is great news! The number of subforums is excessive imo and this will be more valuable to us and yourselves long term

Can we please have a sub-forum (read: basement) For those that obviously hate the game and only post to troll others, bash the game and only spread negativism?

So what not make it that there are Icons that people select when posting a bug, so when its gets posted it will show via icon for instant notification, so you select Website bug, Forum bug, Game bug, I think this was suggested awhile ago also but it never got any reply, now would be a perfect time to do this, that way you don’t log into that part of the forums and see titles only you will see if its a game/website/forum bugs before even clicking on it.

What about the John Smith sticky? “Questions about the economy” will that end up in general or will it just cease to exist? (Or is it possible for it to lose sticky status?)

So I get removing Dungeons, and Crafting forums since those features have been officially abandoned by the devs, but why remove the BLTC forum? That is one of the most active forums with one of the most active devs.

The removing of the dungeons forums is like what they did with the WvW discussion sub forum, did Anet not state awhile ago they had no plans for dungeons, this is a perfect way to mute that part of the community, because general chat moves so fast any topic on there would be instantly lost.

It really does feel like its just another way to mute select players to be honest, I don’t see the problem with the current setup.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I agree that our forum framework could use some significant improvements! We are examining our options on that for sure. Today’s reorganization is part of an improvement process that may potentially lead to new software, as well. The change in software is only in the examination stage right now. Unfortunately we don’t have a formal timeframe for making a final decision or for migrating to a new forum base, if we do go down that path.

This is actually really huge news, regardless of system. I’m glad you guys are finally looking into improvements. I’d be extremely interested in this, since it’s something i’ve done for about 12-15 years, managing communities. Thanks for at least telling us this is something being looked into.

I wouldn’t have any issue with the “reorgansation” if the Search feature actually worked. Are you going to fix the Search feature? It’s one of the reasons why there are multiple threads created about the same exact topic over and over again.
If I only want to search about Dungeons, I’m certainly not going to want to look through page after page of data.

Ok I Did It.2854:

It really does feel like its just another way to mute select players to be honest, I don’t see the problem with the current setup.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

So I get removing Dungeons, and Crafting forums since those features have been officially abandoned by the devs, but why remove the BLTC forum? That is one of the most active forums with one of the most active devs.

I disagree. I am very used to seeing how threads with potential do not receive enough attention because they’re put into appropriate subforums, but only the most dedicated members (with set opinions) visit those subforums. Also, cases of having duplicate threads existing in several subforums (e.g. Economy and General) are very common, which is rather confusing – and is also discouraging participation since it means either guessing on the “right” thread or cross-posting. So I would argue that “streamlining” the “forum experience” should have a positive effect on all discussions, and I believe this is the idea behind the changes.

Gaile Gray.6029:

The downside: Will it impact load times? I find myself twiddling my fingers waiting for the forums to load at the present time (another argument for new software, perhaps) and I’d hate to wait even longer for loading.

Personally, I rarely have issues with thread lists loading (unlike post editing). They’re loading fairly fast even though I’m accessing them from Russia, not even Europe – usually in under 2 seconds for full page render after I click the link.

Merging tech support (PC and Mac) is going to create a mess. A lot of the problems that show up have generic fixes across Windows and although the same concept works for Mac, the process is different. Most people don’t identify their OS at the start. Windows will still be assumed but by merging them, even the most simple of fixes will begin with “PC or Mac?”

The Forums should also have some sort of What’s New button/ Active topics. In these forums, some sections have bigger audience, others smaller. For example, the most viewed forum section is General Discussion, and the most ignored sectios are Fan Generated Content/Audio. That’s one of the reasons why some people prefer posting in General Discussion, altough their thread might be more apropriate for other forum. Another reason why General Discussion is more viewed is because devs generally post in there. By posting in General Discussion, your thread has bigger chance to be seen by a developper.
A What’s new button would be really useful.

I think that the Forum Specialists will have the huge task to move threads from place to place, mainly because of General Discussion issue.
If Forum Specialists take their role seriously, will Arena.Net staff continue posting on forums as much as before ? People want to communicate dirrectly with devs.

“A Forum Specialist’s term will end after 6 months, at which time applications will open for a new round of specialists.
Forum Specialists may not serve consecutive 6-month terms, but are welcome to re-apply at a later date.”

Can I suggest that the process of picking new Specialists start at the 5 month mark so there is no gap.

It seems that company’s way to handle negative feedback and upset/worried players is to remove the possibility to give negative feedback, or express reasons why players are upset and/or worried.

How? By pooling some of the most active subforums into one gigantic subforum will ensure that topics drop to page 2 and beyond (which equals to forgotten) extremely fast. I guess it is just easier to ignore one gigantic section than several smaller ones. Moderation will be easier too (like Gaile said; reacting to flags will be faster, and that is way more important than actual communication).

Gaile Gray.6029:

This will facilitate greater interaction between you and ArenaNet team members.

Gaile Gray.6029:

First, the Dungeons and Crafting Sub-forums haven’t been abandoned, but it is true that they haven’t seen a lot of dev activity lately. Our hope is that when we’re asking the developers to look at fewer forums — to not have to scroll down 11 times to get to the bottom group, to not have to play a guessing game of “Where would players look for this info?” — there will be increased developer participation.

Now this is an interesting statement. Doubling what is very close to zero will still be very close to zero, but at least it can be said something was doubled. How exactly is scrolling down to proper subforum any different, than skimming through several dozens of random topics and subpages?

Another big annoying problem with threads on Page 2 or higher is often that if you
click on an image in a thread, and after that use the page-back function you often
simply don’t get out of the thread.
So you have to go back to the first forum page and from there again to page 2.

Just my 2cents but it seems like the normal discussion is going to get really hard to keep track of certain threads now. From the list you gave, its merging at least 10 other sub forums into that forum. I’m not sure how quickly stuff is created in those sub forums (races specifically), but I get the feeling that any new thread will be off the first page within minutes, especially with player helping player getting merged into it too.

And wasn’t the profession balance subforum created not that long ago specifically as a single place for the devs to get info? And now its being removed.

After reading some of your replies Gaile, maybe they shouldn’t consider this reshuffle of the forums, and spend time on making a new forum to replace this one that has the things you can do, instead of the things you cant,

Placeholders for topics would be great, when you post in bugs, select the placeholder as

FORUM
GAME
WEBSITE

If you post in general

SUGGESTION
LIVING STORY
PVP DISCUSSION
WVW DISCUSSION

You could even add a filter on there that allows you to only show the topics you want to see, a WvW only player doesn’t want to read threw 10 pages of general chat to find a topic, and as PvE is 98% of this game, the WvW players would be drowned out,

It makes no sense to change the forums to make it harder for the players to use regardless of what genius has said otherwise at a Monday morning meeting, honestly if you want to drive more people away from the forums, keep up the changes,

This is nothing against you Gaile, I actually feel sorry that you take all the flack from the community on such things, espically when you have no control over the outcome at the end.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Healix.5819:

Merging tech support (PC and Mac) is going to create a mess. A lot of the problems that show up have generic fixes across Windows and although the same concept works for Mac, the process is different. Most people don’t identify their OS at the start. Windows will still be assumed but by merging them, even the most simple of fixes will begin with “PC or Mac?”

Then I go back to the suggestion just above: Start the thread with “MAC: [subject line]” or “PC: [subject line]” and our technical support people can answer appropriately.

I agree with you, not specifying OS is going to be an issue, so doing so in the subject line seems a quick and easy solution.

If you think posters will read stickies and follow rules on their own, then sure ;-)

I wish posts that are edited, especially by Devs, showed up chronologically. What I mean is…if you are following a thread, leave it or refresh it, and come back, you will never see the edited information. The forum will drop you at the last post you read, with no notification that anything prior has been changed. Thus, we miss any new information that has been posted since we originally read the post in question.

If there is ever new software, I wish it could somehow notify us if (at least in the case of Devs) that those posts have new or changed information.

Gaile, if I may make a suggestion for the sticky threads? What do you think of having a single Bookmark sticky that links to some of the current stickied threads categorized by topic? Then the team could still have plenty of room to sticky high priority discussions and the community wouldn’t lose threads that we’ve come to value.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Healix.5819:

Merging tech support (PC and Mac) is going to create a mess. A lot of the problems that show up have generic fixes across Windows and although the same concept works for Mac, the process is different. Most people don’t identify their OS at the start. Windows will still be assumed but by merging them, even the most simple of fixes will begin with “PC or Mac?”

Then I go back to the suggestion just above: Start the thread with “MAC: [subject line]” or “PC: [subject line]” and our technical support people can answer appropriately.

I agree with you, not specifying OS is going to be an issue, so doing so in the subject line seems a quick and easy solution.

I would imagine, this would be part of the role of a forum specialist, to ensure this stuff gets formatted correctly?

Lynne.8416:

I wouldn’t have any issue with the “reorgansation” if the Search feature actually worked.

Use Google to search specific sections of the forum.

For example, to search for dungeons in this section, search for:
dungeon site:forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2

ArenaNet could probably rework their search function to do this for you, but they might not want to have it built-in for other reasons.

No offense meant, but I don’t really understand the purpose of consolidating the sub-forums. I thought the purpose of sub-forums was to facilitate Devs and others being able to quickly and easily find threads/post pertaining to their area of interest/expertise.

Now it sounds like one large jumble of subjects, making it much more difficult to find what you may be looking for. Especially with no Search function. As fast as some sub-forums churn through threads, I foresee many, many duplicates created just to get some ‘face-time’. Meaning much more moderation, and waste of resources.

Maybe I don’t understand the purpose or intent. My apologies, if so.

• Merging BLTC with General: yes. Having duplicate threads on the same subject is bad, and many BLTC topics aren’t that economics-only after all.

• Merging MAC bugs with PC: no. This may hurt consistency, but having Mac bugs in a separate was always great – you don’t misinform them, they don’t misinform you. If people see a MAC section, they can use it; if they don’t, they’ll just assume it doesn’t matter instead of noting it, and it will indeed cause a lot of confusion and extra clicking and typing.

• Search: if fixing Search is still difficult, can I suggest… removing the search field from its spot altogether? It should be fairly easy just cutting the <form class=“searchy” name=“searchy”… part from the code. People use it, don’t get anything and assume they’re the first ones to post about mounts, duels, expansions and so on. If you don’t have a search function, it can’t at least misinform them!

The most organized forums I’ve ever seen that had has many Titled topics as this one, did the organization a little differently without eliminating any of the many sub-topics by using the follow format, as an example:

Main Title: Support
Sub Forums: Technical Support
Sub Sub Forum: PC Issues
MAC Issues
Sub Forum: Bugs
Sub Sub Forum: Game Bugs
Forum Bugs
Website Bugs
BLTC Bugs

etc., etc., the above is only an example, and though it doesn’t decrease the number of sub forums, what it does do is centralize the sub forums in major categories without jumbling everything into one giant forum that is really impossible to keep track of without a working search feature. Your devs are still going to find it almost impossible to follow threads if everything game related is dumped into a general forum such as Guild Wars 2 Discussion. If however you break up the sub forums into smaller subforums under much larger categories, then they don’t have to wade through 44 different forums to find the one they want, but can specifically go into the sub-sub forum of their choice or need…of course, this is just my opinion, but then again I like information to be clearly segregated.

I really don’t like that you’re merging PvP teams, WvW recruitment, and guild forums into one. That’s a clusterkitten in the highest degree, and will make sorting through that to find appropriate topics horrible. This will also have an impact on the success of those recruitment threads, since it will be harder for people looking for things to find what they’re looking for. Please keep the distinction between these forums so that people can find things easier.

Please don’t delete dungeon subforum and class balance subforum. It will be such a chaos like the new “General” achievement section…

The biggest drawback with consolidation is the speed new threads are created. The General Discussion thread already fills at lightning speed.

The loss of the TP board is major IMO and folding it into the general discussion board will shatter the community their as topics quickly vanish to page X in a matter of hours. Merging with Player helping Player, which moves a lot slower would be better but I still think it deserves it’s own community board.

Merging Account and Technical will be a nightmare. I sort of understand the logic lumping “game doesn’t work, why?” posts together but issues you have sole control over like accounts mixed with issues that the tech savvy can also help could upset and confuse players wondering why their account issue isn’t being helped like players with simple tech issues.

Lastly the player mods concern me. I hope they will be watched and a mechanism in place to report irregularities by them to ANet. There’s always a chance that power will go to someone’s head and that power corrupts.

Gaile Gray.6029:

The Forum Specialists will mostly focus on information gathering, and that will not in any way replace active participation by the developers. I don’t think that a forum specialist would be posting so much as amassing information that my team will route to individual developers or teams for their information and possible response, when appropriate and possible.

I vote for a rename to avoid confusion of what a specialist role is. Forum spider, or Forum crawler perhaps, ex: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182072?hl=en

Gaile Gray.6029:

Healix.5819:

Merging tech support (PC and Mac) is going to create a mess. A lot of the problems that show up have generic fixes across Windows and although the same concept works for Mac, the process is different. Most people don’t identify their OS at the start. Windows will still be assumed but by merging them, even the most simple of fixes will begin with “PC or Mac?”

Then I go back to the suggestion just above: Start the thread with “MAC: [subject line]” or “PC: [subject line]” and our technical support people can answer appropriately.

I agree with you, not specifying OS is going to be an issue, so doing so in the subject line seems a quick and easy solution.

Would it be possible to implement a tagging system with this forum software? Dunno, seems like issues like the lack of a tagging system sort of defeat the point of merging forums.

I.e. Why delete the dungeon sub-forum? It’s going to make a Dev looking for dungeon-specific information have to sift through a lot of un-related posts in the General Discussion.

ANET likes to fix what isn’t broken. I’m sorry that your moderators have to scroll a few extra times to get to the dungeon/crafting forums, but if the posters can do it, I’m sure you guys can manage too. Please don’t delete the dungeon subforum. It’s obvious your development team doesn’t care for that kind of content anymore, but some of your PLAYERS still do.

Also, on a side note, I JUST posted a thread in general discussion for you Gaile, about dungeons, and I asked that it NOT be moved to the dungeon subforum. It got moved there anyway. It’s called “Dungeon Inquiry.” Any chance you can move it back to the general discussion before you archive that entire subforum?

This reorganisation is horrible. Why change something that isnt broken? It will make the general discussions even more of a mess because its moving quite fast already.

This is the opposite of better communications. There is a reason encyclopedias come in organize volumes rather than one book with no index and a short table of contents.

Gaile, I’m afraid that putting “Players Helping Players” that low on the list will cause it to never be seen. This is disheartening, given it’s one of the most key areas newcomers can get detailed answers to their questions and the people who frequent that sub-forum are often those who enjoy tutoring or mentoring newcomers anyway.

I would put “Players Helping Players” in the Game Discussion category, or even create a new main forum category of “Getting Started” “Newcomers Welcome” or something similar to appear above the Professions area.

You guys desperately need to consider a CDI forum. While I imagine the goal is to have the CDI threads in their respective forums, a forum that acts as a link list to the actual CDI discussions would really help imo.

Malchior.5042:

Gaile, I’m afraid that putting “Players Helping Players” that low on the list will cause it to never be seen. This is disheartening, given it’s one of the most key areas newcomers can get detailed answers to their questions and the people who frequent that sub-forum are often those who enjoy tutoring or mentoring newcomers anyway.

I would put “Players Helping Players” in the Game Discussion forum, or even create a new main forum category of “Getting Started” “Newcomers Welcome” or something similar to appear above the Professions area.

Came here tomsay this.

In addition to my previous post, it’s horrible that the dungeon forum is being removed in favor of merging it with “Guild Wars 2 Discussion”! That is akin to merging the WvW discussion into the PvP forums because “It’s still PvP”. Dungeon tactics, dungeon speed clear opportunities for improvements, challenges, and the whole dungeon community at large is very, very distinct from the open world PvE group.

Please reconsider and keep the dungeon forum distinct!