Guild Wars 2

This idea came to me after reading the posts made by Gaile on this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Want-the-human-female-animations-back/page/4#post4525864

It sparked a small discussion about what exactly it is that we players want from ANet in terms of communication, and how this could be achieved in a way that is reasonable and feasible.

We’ve seen a marked increase in red posts on the forums lately from a lot of devs in their areas of interest (e.g. John Smith posts quite frequently in the BLTC forum, Maclaine in the Audio forum, Gaile here in the General discussion), and I think that’s a great step in the right direction.

At the same time, for fast-moving forums, there are still several topics that tend to fall through the cracks. Now, we can’t really blame the devs for this; they have their own jobs to do and can’t really monitor the forums 24/7 to reply to every single post.

So… What if we instead had a sticky on each forum to call attention to major topics (and by major, I mean multi-page threads that have plenty of interest, and not just somebody bumping up their own personal thread over and over)? I got this idea from John Smith’s “I have a question about the economy” sticky thread over on the BLTC forum. As well as posting questions there, we can also use the [Communications] thread to post links to major topics, thereby giving Gaile or whichever dev most frequents the forum a single-stop place where they can see what are the burning issues players want a response about and respond.

As an example of how this Communications sticky thread might function:

Post 1: “Hi Gaile, we were wondering if you had any update on whether the devs are looking at reworking the Personal Story by re-introducing the missing Personal Story steps as discussed in this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/My-Greatest-Fear-Plotline/page/7#post4525814”

Gaile (or another dev who’s involved with the issue at hand) can then reply either in the linked thread, or on the Communications sticky thread itself, letting us know what the current status is.

Thoughts/criticism/further ideas?

Just wondering…wouldn’t the ‘hot topic’ threads be on the front page most likely, anyway, and thus, in a place to catch the Dev’s attention?

But, a Sticky like the Dolyak Express would be fine. =)

LOL. I’d imagine WvW stickies would be at least 70% about hackers, griefers and trolls plaguing this or that matchup. I doubt Anet would like that very much.

Then again, Anet can just lock threads they don’t like to prevent them from reaching the sticky threshold. But I doubt players would like that very much.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I love that you’re thinking about this, and offering suggestions on how to keep on our path of improved communications. (And <3 for noticing the recent increase in posts. It’s so nice that so many forum members are noticing our increased focus and efforts!)

Here are a few questions:

• How do we keep the stickied thread meaningful? That is, how do we use it to focus on truly major issues? Because what’s major to one player may be minor to someone else.
  • (See the thread about the disabled animations if you want an example. You’ll note that some players completely agreed with the decision and welcomed the info that they would return; others were puzzled by the decision or felt it shouldn’t have happened, quite the variety, as in most threads.)
• What’s a realistic bar? 5000 reads? 400 posts? 10 pages? And, if there is a bar, can we expect that someone wouldn’t bump a thread — sure, upon risk of forum moderation, of course — simply to meet the bar?
• What about the questions that can’t be answered? I think it would be natural that a “highlights” thread might contain posts that we simply cannot answer. But it would be sad if forum members then got angry because by highlighting the topic it seemed to require addressing? Could forum members — and I know this is difficult — agree that an answer is welcome, and that the answer may not be possible?
• Wouldn’t this possibly deflect conversation in various threads? If such a thing existed, I’d suggest that it would link to the highlighted thread and that any dev response go in that original thread.
• Where does this thread live? Guild Wars 2 Discussion? Somewhere else?

Anyway just some questions that occurred to me. Let’s continue the conversation!

Very fair points and I agree on most of them.

1. Agreed greatly on that one. It would be difficult to keep it focused on what’s truly considered ‘major’ by the majority (see what I did there?) and what one player finds important, the one next to them would puzzle over why it’s an issue in the first place.

2. Also agreed. I also think that it would create a small niche of forumer (or at least a passionate player) to begin to bump their threads either using their account, or multiple accounts (as has been previously shown in some threads).

2a. I think a realistic bar would be something like this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Is-the-maize-balm-rat-farm-an-exploit It’s got a lot of replies in various camps, and it’s a big hot-button issue with the current events as well as a respectable number of replies and a good number of reads.

3. I personally think that most forum-goers would agree that an answer can sometimes not be given, or at least some sort of answer is welcome (I certainly fall into that category, and many of my friends as well). Personal opinion, but mileage may vary.

4. Also agree fully. A simple list of links and the thread’s title (and if the title falls short, a short description of what’s within) would do wonders.

5. On where it should go, that is a really hard thing to say. For me, I frequent Guild Wars 2 discussion, the class forums (mainly Thief and Engineer) and the dungeon forums, as are the main parts of the game I’m interested in. Honestly, though, I’d say Guild Wars 2 Discussion, as it’s the general discussion pretty much, and if anyone were to go looking for a sticky such as the one suggested it’d be there.

5a. If I were to go so far as to say that, maybe, if this were considered, maybe an entirely new forum up in the News, Game Discussion or Community Corner? That, instead of just a sticky, a thread would be moved there if considered heavily? But that could create another problem in that many people would want to be put there just to be there, to be noticed…

I’d say keep tossing ideas, as I’d love to see something like this. Any answer is better than no answer I say, and a sticky/forum such as the suggested would be amazing!

EDIT: I think that, in order to be put into this sticky/forum, a heavy skim through a few pages should be done by whomever decides to sticky it to see if any REAL discussion is happening rather than a bump/15char fest is going on.

Thanks for the response, Gaile.

• Yes, a big concern of mine was how to keep the stickied thread meaningful, yet still worthwhile. The idea behind the thread is to provide a way for players to call attention to issues that they want some feedback on or more information about (and thereby avoid the whole “ANet doesn’t care! It’s been X weeks/months since this thread went up and we’ve had no responses!” perception). To that end, maybe the thread should only be used as a “hotlink” thread to direct your attention to existing threads that could really use a dev response (see that example post I made in my OP, for example). I originally imagined that it could be used both as a platform to ask new questions, as well as a springboard to existing threads, but maybe having both in the same thread would be too broad.

• I imagine that each sub-forum would have its own sticky thread. That way, issues pertaining specifically to a certain area of the game can be addressed by devs who would be best equipped to answer that question. (Maclaine and Cody have been doing a wonderful job of this in the Audio forum, for example. ) It also would help ease the burden on you since not everything has to go into the General Forum sticky.

For really slow moving forums, a sticky thread may not be necessary.

• I really don’t have a good answer for how to set the bar for when threads deserve a mention. My gut feeling is that any issue in which multiple players are unhappy, and that can be traced back to some aspect of the game which is perhaps not working, or not working as it should, are valid candidates, but setting down hard and fast rules might mean that issues which only affect a small handful of players, but which affects them very badly, get overlooked.
• For questions that can’t be answered, I honestly feel that telling us the reasons why a particular question can’t be answered is enough to satisfy us. For example, over in the BLTC thread, there’s been a number of occasions where John has straight-up told us, “I’m not allowed to actually reveal that information”, along with maybe a short explanation as to why. (Sometimes we players can answer that for him too! “It’s because that kind of information would be a boon to gold sellers”, “Companies usually cannot reveal any kind of real financial information except to shareholders”. I’ve noticed that John usually only steps in when it’s something that other regulars on the BLTC forum haven’t already answered for them, or something entirely new.)

If the issue in question is one that simply hasn’t had time to be addressed yet, then something as simple as “we are aware of this issue and are thinking of possible solutions, but we don’t have a time frame on when they will go in as we’re busy getting LS2 ready for release” will probably be enough to satisfy us. (At least temporarily. ) And down the track, when you do have more information, you can provide an update for us, like what happened with the missing female human animations.

• I agree that any answers to a specific issue should go back in the original thread that spawned it. It should make answers regarding it easier to find via searches, and help keep the sticky thread from being cluttered with unnecessary posts.

And if I may end this on a somewhat selfish note, Gaile, we really could use an update over in the “My Greatest Fear” thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/My-Greatest-Fear-Plotline/page/7#post4525814”

@LordKuru: Yeah, that’s why I think that the stickies should just be links to existing threads discussing the issue at hand. So for WvW, we would need a thread discussing hacks or siege trolls etc., and only post in the sticky thread if some new issue has come up (a potential new hack, or a new exploit location) that needs a dev’s attention when the thread’s been quiet for a while.

Zaxares.5419:

a single-stop place where they can see what are the burning issues players want a response about and respond.

The flip side would be what if its a burning question that players want answered but devs don’t want to talk about?

Specifically I’m thinking of Achievement Points in WvW and titles such as the Yak slapper title. The player base long identified that the play time to acquire such a title was something along the lines of playing 24hrs a day for 8 years straight (seriously).

Anyways we were historically told off for bumping posts like that:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/A-Note-on-Necroposting-don-t-do-it/first#post4245260
(No red Necros)

So while they may appreciate it on the surface, I think they would dislike it if a question hogged the lime light that they didn’t want to talk about (GvG?).

Just going to list some bullet points

• The biggest things that create controversy come from a release patch. So (and I don’t mean this to suggest you don’t already) make sure you know what those changes are ahead of time. It’s not too hard to identify stuff that you suspect may be controversial, so to have an answer ready for why something was done is an excellent way to head off the worst of the reaction.

• The “ask John Smith” thread is pretty fantastic as it is really a single place you can go to get his insight on a particular topic. The rules are stated clearly up front that it is not to screw around or yell at him or debate stuff, it’s to ask questions and get answers. The end result is that people are largely appreciative of his efforts and respectful of his time. One of those would be helpful in every forum that one or more of the team specialists could answer.

• As far as types of answers go, note that a frequent answer from John in that thread is, “I can’t tell you that because of X” . That’s acceptable and a better answer than just pure silence, as long as it isn’t the most common answer. Similarly, your answer about why human female animations can’t be changed easily was spot on. Sometimes things seem like they should be an easy fix, and knowing why they aren’t calms people down.

• In the event of something like the previous idea, where there’s no quick fix, opening up a new thread to ask for suggestions and look for something that IS doable that would fix an underlying issue is one of the best things that ever happen on these forums. One example I can think of involved first person camera and the problems involved. The only thing wrong with those discussions is that they usually don’t wind up with much in the way of resolution, either through a “i will suggest that we implement this in the next feature pack” or “i don’t think we’ve found a workable solution yet”. So it can easily seem like the discussion just ended and was forgotten about. And as always, include a very healthy dose of, “This is not a promise, it is what we are going to try.”

• I know I’m a broken record on this, but not being able to even come close to discussing things in development is a HUGE buzzkill. Being vague and non-committal about future development is better than just saying “we can’t discuss it, and this conversation is over”.

• Finally, Roadmaps might be a thing of the past, and I still think that’s a mistake, but occasional notes of what sort of things the developers are currently working on would be nice to know. Doesn’t need to be a list updated constantly, just every once in awhile throw it out there during a down time when it seems like nothing is happening. You are, I’m sure, surprised when you see people say that Arenanet has no developers given that anyone can see you’ve been hiring them from your careers page. But the reason is just because the last real update we had on that front was hearing the living story team was shrunk down, and so the question becomes where did everyone else go?

Gaile Gray.6029:

Here are a few questions:

• How do we keep the stickied thread meaningful? That is, how do we use it to focus on truly major issues? Because what’s major to one player may be minor to someone else.
  • (See the thread about the disabled animations if you want an example. You’ll note that some players completely agreed with the decision and welcomed the info that they would return; others were puzzled by the decision or felt it shouldn’t have happened, quite the variety, as in most threads.)
• What’s a realistic bar? 5000 reads? 400 posts? 10 pages? And, if there is a bar, can we expect that someone wouldn’t bump a thread — sure, upon risk of forum moderation, of course — simply to meet the bar?

I think that a “bar” is a bad idea. Common sense, and familiarity with the forums should suffice to at least keep people happy, and a variety of reasons can be considered. For example:

Traits – This is important for the obvious “bar” reason. The current thread is nearing 3,000 posts, and has over 138,000 views. It’s also a core feature, and is pretty much uncontroversially hated.

SAB – This doesn’t have the volume of traits, nor is it a core system. It did, however, spawn multi-server protests for several days. The people who care, really care, and a lot of them paid real world money to use it.

Hobosacks – This isn’t a core issue, and doesn’t affect many. However, aesthetics are your end game and engineers have been living with this, unhappily, for two years. It is also something that really doesn’t take an overhaul.

Guild management – This isn’t talked about quite so much, because not many players manage guilds. But it’s pretty fundamental to the success of the game, and pretty much everyone who runs a guild recognises the need for some basic features like guild mail or message pop ups.

Obviously these are only the things that I noticed, and I personally care a lot about three of them. But I don’t think it would be hard to construct a list of issues that would appease the majority regarding communication. The major point being that choosing these topics isn’t simply a matter of (heh) metrics, but rather engaging with the community. Which we all know you’re very good at.

Gaile, It’s not the quantity of the posts but the quality and the quality is still exactly the same as before the increase. Until a certain policy gets kicked to the curb any “improvement” is a farce. How many times do you like to hear the phrase we can’t talk about things in development if you were on the receiving end?

Zaxares.5419:

We’ve seen a marked increase in red posts on the forums lately from a lot of devs …

Amen.

Mainly, I think it works great as it is right now. But I do see (as OP mentioned) that the disposition of red post can be affected a lot by:

… in their areas of interest

That’s not a bad thing by itself, not at all. You’ll get more understanding and constructive replies, and you’ll have a much more dynamic discussion between dev and player.

However, if too few POIs are represented – caused by too few devs being active: the disposition of red posts may become too fixed.

Gaile Gray.6029:
quite the variety

For me personally, I would like to see more attention to the lore forums. For others it’s raids, dungeons, etc. (cake, keep, eat)

Regarding lore forums:
Obviously, you don’t want to spoil anything. But please keep in mind that there is a lot of questions just requiring simple clarifications or explanations (e.g. the doubts about the Mouvelian calendar’s distribution of days – yes Angel: I’m looking at you).

I think you’ve really shown an “increased focus and efforts” in communication between dev and player – and I really applaud the trend you’ve started.
“Next step” may not be simply more forum posts, but rather more forum devs? = more broadened distribution?

For me: more red posts from Jeff Grubb, Ree Soesbee and Angel McCoy – yes please

I honestly don’t think stickied threads will help anything. As ANet peeps frequently point out, they read the forums. They know what threads are there. Common sense is enough to determine which topics are due for at least some kind of response or acknowledgement. If they have not yet responded to one of these types of threads, it is most likely being intentionally avoided.

In fact, the “My Greatest Fear” topic mentioned in the OP is a good example. When the issue with the Personal Story came up, here are some of the many responses that were given over a month ago (found in the “Communicating With You” thread, ironically):

“Leah is looking into it and we will update when we have more info.”

“We are absolutely not going to ignore it FYI.
we will have more info soon.”

“Probably an update Monday if you don’t mind. Super busy today.”

“First of all thanks very much for all of your info. We have actually been using your posts to investigate (or rather Leah and her team has).”

“I have asked them to post an update but they are super busy. So if they don’t today I will swing by and then update on their behalf. I have been forwarding yours and others info to them and they have been using it. So thank you very much.”

“I or Leah will update as soon as we can and we intend to at the minimum to get things back in order.”

First things first. The response to this started out excellently. There was acknowledgement that there was a problem (even if they wouldn’t come out and say if it was intentional or a bug…there seemed to be some confusion on that front). Then they said they’d give an update. Soon. Then it was reported that it was still being investigated, and player feedback and information was being used in the investigation.

All excellent communication.

And then…nothing.

Since then, as far as I can tell, there’s been silence. If I am mistaken and I have missed something, I apologize, and I hope someone will correct me. But I know that the players posting in the “My Greatest Fear” thread don’t seem to know what’s going on and there hasn’t been a red post there since about a month ago, and that post contained no information about the status of the issue.

So, obviously, the devs know it is there. They are choosing not to post updates. No amount of stickied threads will change that. If we want to improve communications, then we need a dev team that is committed to keeping the players updated. No communication on an issue that has been the focus of an ongoing investigation for an entire month is not good communication. It is a ball, dropped.

To be honest, I’m not even all that concerned with the “My Greatest Fear” issue, personally. But when I see issues handled in this manner, it severely erodes my confidence in how my issues will be handled if and when they arise. It just doesn’t look good. Again, apologies if I have missed some kind of communication that was given. It is not my intention to misrepresent how that particular situation is being handled.

Otherwise, I see and appreciate the increase in red posts, and I want ANet to know that. I don’t mean to sound harsh. You guys should feel good about that, and I will certainly give credit where it is due.

TLDR: Stickies: Not the answer. (My opinion, of course. YMMV)

there could be a section on the main forum page that lists all the teams that work on GW2 to allow for much more targeted posts and responses. for example, the dev teams would get one, the art team would get one, even the website design guys could have one if you want. under each of these would be a menu for the specific individuals in those teams to allow for the more active/eloquent/in a position to release info among them to respond, update, and receive questions (or hate) related to that area. may result in a bit of messy fragmentation, but should greatly enhance communication as anyone on anet’s end wouldn’t be required to search through dozens of threads for the relevant ones. alternatively, you could always have polls to help gauge things. even the happy players will vote in polls

Gaile Gray.6029:

I love that you’re thinking about this, and offering suggestions on how to keep on our path of improved communications. (And <3 for noticing the recent increase in posts. It’s so nice that so many forum members are noticing our increased focus and efforts!)

Here are a few questions:

• How do we keep the stickied thread meaningful? That is, how do we use it to focus on truly major issues? Because what’s major to one player may be minor to someone else.
  • (See the thread about the disabled animations if you want an example. You’ll note that some players completely agreed with the decision and welcomed the info that they would return; others were puzzled by the decision or felt it shouldn’t have happened, quite the variety, as in most threads.)
• What’s a realistic bar? 5000 reads? 400 posts? 10 pages? And, if there is a bar, can we expect that someone wouldn’t bump a thread — sure, upon risk of forum moderation, of course — simply to meet the bar?
• What about the questions that can’t be answered? I think it would be natural that a “highlights” thread might contain posts that we simply cannot answer. But it would be sad if forum members then got angry because by highlighting the topic it seemed to require addressing? Could forum members — and I know this is difficult — agree that an answer is welcome, and that the answer may not be possible?
• Wouldn’t this possibly deflect conversation in various threads? If such a thing existed, I’d suggest that it would link to the highlighted thread and that any dev response go in that original thread.
• Where does this thread live? Guild Wars 2 Discussion? Somewhere else?

Anyway just some questions that occurred to me. Let’s continue the conversation!

Gaile, to be honest I’m not sure if the sticky thing would work after reading this thread but I do have a couple of complaints about current situations. The following is a list of a few threads that I’m not completely satisfied with how they turned out:

1)https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Mad-Memories-is-back

You decided to post this:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Arikyali.5804:

Oh, that is so awesome! Thank you for sharing this!

Yes, thanks a bunch!

That’s fine but the issue I’m having is that you never followed up on this thread. The issue came up that after a few steps, you can no longer progress. NPC’s are missing or can not be found. People want to know if this is bugged or maybe just an easter egg.

2)https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Raffle-Flameseeker-Prophecies

Gaile Gray.6029:

Lodius — thank you for asking. Please allow me a bit of time to investigate this and get you an answer.

One note: You would never want to ask for a user name — that’s the e-mail address used to log in to the game and it is part of an account’s credentials (which should never be made public). I believe you may have been referring to display name or character name, either of which is publicly viewable and would be equally useful as an identifier.

Questions that people may have include, “What if this isn’t legitimate?” or “What if I get scammed? Can I get a refund?” Customer Support informs me that they would investigate, but that their ability to resolve the issue would be limited to taking action against the person or persons involved and would not include making individual refunds to victims. (Gold would be traced and removed but it could not be individually replaced.)

Please know that I am not at all suggesting that this is a scam. However, I want to provide a generic indication of how situations are resolved when something is not operated with complete legitimacy.

I will respond when I have an answer, and if this is a “go” I will reopen the thread. Thanks for asking about this.

Maybe not an issue yet, it’s only been a day so far and maybe you haven’t had the chance to find out the information you need yet.

3)https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Gem-Exchange-Fix-where

In this thread people complain that they can’t get exactly the gems or gold they are looking for including silver and copper and this is your response:

Gaile Gray.6029:

daimasei.4091:

What I’m supposed to do with 1 gem???

What do you do with 1 cent in change? Isn’t it the same thing?

daimasei.4091:

Wow, they “fixed” this and now everything is on sale? Clever strategy indeed!

No, the team rushed to update the exchange because they knew there was a sale coming and didn’t want to cause disappointment. No strategy involved, just addressing player feedback.

I’m not trying to be mean here but I find this to be an unacceptable answer. To me it’s like if I by something in a store that normally costs $1.59, the store just charges me $2 because their system doesn’t recognize anything other than whole values.

Now I haven’t had a chance to play the game here lately, been pretty busy this month and was also just taking a break from the game during the mid season break and I’m looking forward to coming back soon. I just need to know that the devs have our best interest at heart. A couple of things I’m seeing here might help. If you take an interest in a thread, please follow up on it, ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. Also in point 3 above, if you guys are doing some PR, usually you tell people what they want to hear not something they don’t want to hear.

Gaile, I appreciate everything you have done for the Guild Wars community. Your job as a support liaison was outstanding. Maybe you are still adjusting to your new role as a communications team lead so I can be a little more understanding. I just wanted to point out a couple of things that I’ve noticed here lately and if this came across as disrespectful, I apologize.

Issue#2 addressed, nice response Gaile:)

Robert.4197:

3)https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Gem-Exchange-Fix-where

In this thread people complain that they can’t get exactly the gems or gold they are looking for including silver and copper and this is your response:

Gaile Gray.6029:

daimasei.4091:

What I’m supposed to do with 1 gem???

What do you do with 1 cent in change? Isn’t it the same thing?

daimasei.4091:

Wow, they “fixed” this and now everything is on sale? Clever strategy indeed!

No, the team rushed to update the exchange because they knew there was a sale coming and didn’t want to cause disappointment. No strategy involved, just addressing player feedback.

I’m not trying to be mean here but I find this to be an unacceptable answer. To me it’s like if I by something in a store that normally costs $1.59, the store just charges me $2 because their system doesn’t recognize anything other than whole values.

Now I haven’t had a chance to play the game here lately, been pretty busy this month and was also just taking a break from the game during the mid season break and I’m looking forward to coming back soon. I just need to know that the devs have our best interest at heart. A couple of things I’m seeing here might help. If you take an interest in a thread, please follow up on it, ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. Also in point 3 above, if you guys are doing some PR, usually you tell people what they want to hear not something they don’t want to hear.

Gaile, I appreciate everything you have done for the Guild Wars community. Your job as a support liaison was outstanding. Maybe you are still adjusting to your new role as a communications team lead so I can be a little more understanding. I just wanted to point out a couple of things that I’ve noticed here lately and if this came across as disrespectful, I apologize.

when you post in a thread, do you continue to follow the thread every time you see a new post in it? for every thread you ever post in?

didnt think so.

Actually, I do either until it dies off or gets locked or deleted.

insanemaniac.2456:

when you post in a thread, do you continue to follow the thread every time you see a new post in it? for every thread you ever post in?

didnt think so.

You thought wrong, then. Personally, I look for the “arrow” icon that shows I have posted in the thread, and when I see an updated thread with an arrow I always look to see what the new post is. Even if it’s a necro’d thread from last year.

Now, with regards to Gaile, she can’t post in every thread every day “no news to report today,” nor can she hunt down those involved and torture them until she gets an answer. So if there’s nothing to report, she’s not going to report that there’s nothing to report.

I don’t expect Gaile or any other dev for that matter to reply to every post in every thread on the forums but when an ANET representative does post in a thread, they show that they have taken an interest in that thread. If a question is brought up and the answer is not known then the rep that posted in the thread can go find the answer from someone else. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve had to do this. As a matter of fact, in my second example, that’s exactly what Gaile had to do.

So what happens if she doesn’t get an answer? Or if someone higher in the chain of command says “we’re not talking about that yet.” If there is no answer to report, of if she is forbidden to talk about it, there’s nothing to say.

In regards to point #1 I had:

Cayena.9647:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Arikyali.5804:

Oh, that is so awesome! Thank you for sharing this!

Yes, thanks a bunch!

Gaile Gray you are the biggest tease ever. What does this mean? Thanks? “Thanks for sharing this information so other people may collect the backpack” or “Thanks for pointing out this bug so we can REMOVE IT AND CRUSH YOUR PITY LITTLE DREAMS”

._. I nearly got a heartattack seeing this post. I want it soo bad. it’s my number one regret in gw2.

I think this is a very good response/question. Now the thread was made 7 days ago and problems were posted before Gaile had even replied in that thread. Now that tells me either she only read the first couple posts and decided to reply or she read the thread and just decided to ignore the rest. If for some reason beyond my comprehension she can’t comment on a temporary event that only last 2 weeks and is now over with in less than 4 days, then maybe she should just say so. Being silent just gets people more upset.

Robert.4197:

Actually, I do either until it dies off or gets locked or deleted.

tolunart.2095:

insanemaniac.2456:

when you post in a thread, do you continue to follow the thread every time you see a new post in it? for every thread you ever post in?

didnt think so.

You thought wrong, then. Personally, I look for the “arrow” icon that shows I have posted in the thread, and when I see an updated thread with an arrow I always look to see what the new post is. Even if it’s a necro’d thread from last year.

Now, with regards to Gaile, she can’t post in every thread every day “no news to report today,” nor can she hunt down those involved and torture them until she gets an answer. So if there’s nothing to report, she’s not going to report that there’s nothing to report.

it is completely unreasonable to expect someone else to do this just because you do.

i see it happen quite often that gaile will say “how cute” or “thats nice” or equivalent in a thread and just having a red post generates more posts because people are attention kitten.

its perfectly reasonable to expect her to read subsequent posts when she asks for input. not when she says something like “how cute,” because often that cute post would have just died without her saying something.

maybe you should try pming her if you think she needs to bring her attention (back) to a silly thread.

Why are you all avoiding the Traits thread Gaile? its been a ‘hot topic’ not off the front page for seven months…

insanemaniac.2456:

Robert.4197:

Actually, I do either until it dies off or gets locked or deleted.

tolunart.2095:

insanemaniac.2456:

when you post in a thread, do you continue to follow the thread every time you see a new post in it? for every thread you ever post in?

didnt think so.

You thought wrong, then. Personally, I look for the “arrow” icon that shows I have posted in the thread, and when I see an updated thread with an arrow I always look to see what the new post is. Even if it’s a necro’d thread from last year.

Now, with regards to Gaile, she can’t post in every thread every day “no news to report today,” nor can she hunt down those involved and torture them until she gets an answer. So if there’s nothing to report, she’s not going to report that there’s nothing to report.

it is completely unreasonable to expect someone else to do this just because you do.

i see it happen quite often that gaile will say “how cute” or “thats nice” or equivalent in a thread and just having a red post generates more posts because people are attention kitten.

its perfectly reasonable to expect her to read subsequent posts when she asks for input. not when she says something like “how cute,” because often that cute post would have just died without her saying something.

maybe you should try pming her if you think she needs to bring her attention (back) to a silly thread.

I can’t pm her, it’s against her rules. Anyway, I don’t expect her to read the forums 24/7 but I would think at this point she is aware of the issue but is choosing to ignore it. I will say this though, when she was support liaison, she actually did make an effort to follow upon every thread she posted in.

Rococo.8347:

Why are you all avoiding the Traits thread Gaile? its been a ‘hot topic’ not off the front page for seven months…

She posted in that thread twice yesterday. If you are talking about today, it is the weekend, I doubt we will see a reply today. I could be wrong though, she has posted on Saturday’s before.

insanemaniac.2456:

when you post in a thread, do you continue to follow the thread every time you see a new post in it? for every thread you ever post in?

Actually, I do, too.

When someone posts in a thread and then doesn’t return to it when they see new posts, it’s a pretty clear indication that they were only interested in blurting out their opinion, and not at all interested in what other people had to say.

Forums are about discussion, not just dropping opinion bombs. Discussion is a two-way street.

insanemaniac.2456:

it is completely unreasonable to expect someone else to do this just because you do.

It’s reasonable to expect a person to act in a reasonable manner. However, given your choice of username and the nature of the Internet in general, I won’t hold you to a standard of reasonable behavior.

Without placing a name; Posting quality from ArenaNet forum reps is poor to be gentle.

• Never solid information
• Lawyer phrased
• Never deliver bad news is bad news
  Remember Mad Memories item thread? Well now Halloween is over and we both now know the answer I suspect you knew from the start: IT WAS NEVER GONA BE BACK. But did you say it? oh no. You let players rave on and on, watching from the side. This choice is one example of not delivering bad news, which while lawyer-correct, it causes a quality decrease of forum posts complemented by rightful player distrust to follow.
• Asking for solutions that have been repeating in walls-of-texts for past 2 years.
  Feels like you never wanted solutions – just to stall time.
• More, but there’s no use.

I don’t want to make another text wall, plus I have a feeling you’ll delete my post anyway.

minbariguy.7504:

I honestly don’t think stickied threads will help anything. As ANet peeps frequently point out, they read the forums. They know what threads are there. Common sense is enough to determine which topics are due for at least some kind of response or acknowledgement. If they have not yet responded to one of these types of threads, it is most likely being intentionally avoided.

In fact, the “My Greatest Fear” topic mentioned in the OP is a good example. When the issue with the Personal Story came up, here are some of the many responses that were given over a month ago (found in the “Communicating With You” thread, ironically):

“Leah is looking into it and we will update when we have more info.”

“We are absolutely not going to ignore it FYI.
we will have more info soon.”

“Probably an update Monday if you don’t mind. Super busy today.”

“First of all thanks very much for all of your info. We have actually been using your posts to investigate (or rather Leah and her team has).”

“I have asked them to post an update but they are super busy. So if they don’t today I will swing by and then update on their behalf. I have been forwarding yours and others info to them and they have been using it. So thank you very much.”

“I or Leah will update as soon as we can and we intend to at the minimum to get things back in order.”

First things first. The response to this started out excellently. There was acknowledgement that there was a problem (even if they wouldn’t come out and say if it was intentional or a bug…there seemed to be some confusion on that front). Then they said they’d give an update. Soon. Then it was reported that it was still being investigated, and player feedback and information was being used in the investigation.

All excellent communication.

And then…nothing.

Since then, as far as I can tell, there’s been silence. If I am mistaken and I have missed something, I apologize, and I hope someone will correct me. But I know that the players posting in the “My Greatest Fear” thread don’t seem to know what’s going on and there hasn’t been a red post there since about a month ago, and that post contained no information about the status of the issue.

So, obviously, the devs know it is there. They are choosing not to post updates. No amount of stickied threads will change that. If we want to improve communications, then we need a dev team that is committed to keeping the players updated. No communication on an issue that has been the focus of an ongoing investigation for an entire month is not good communication. It is a ball, dropped.

To be honest, I’m not even all that concerned with the “My Greatest Fear” issue, personally. But when I see issues handled in this manner, it severely erodes my confidence in how my issues will be handled if and when they arise. It just doesn’t look good. Again, apologies if I have missed some kind of communication that was given. It is not my intention to misrepresent how that particular situation is being handled.

Otherwise, I see and appreciate the increase in red posts, and I want ANet to know that. I don’t mean to sound harsh. You guys should feel good about that, and I will certainly give credit where it is due.

TLDR: Stickies: Not the answer. (My opinion, of course. YMMV)

Yeah, lots of things were left unanswered before the thread was locked including this https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Communicating-with-you/4412293

Will copy paste post below:

hi Phys,
By deployed i mean live yes.
Thanks for your reply. I was just talking about the design dev process primarily. We do have a QA team that tests the work and an Alpha group for feedback.
The process i described above is definitely not about speed (-: It is a quality iteration process as well as a best working practice that allows us to learn and improve the quality of the experience as we go along.
I will ask Ed Hocking our QA director to comment about the QA process and Gavian (our production director) to talk about production practices on Monday.
Once we have the feature ‘as designed’ i would love to chat about the design side of the release regarding NPE.
Hoep this helps.
Going to watch the game now.
Go Hawks!
Chris

minbariguy.7504:

Actually, I do, too.

When someone posts in a thread and then doesn’t return to it when they see new posts, it’s a pretty clear indication that they were only interested in blurting out their opinion, and not at all interested in what other people had to say.

Forums are about discussion, not just dropping opinion bombs. Discussion is a two-way street.

Same here. If the topic is one of interest that I’m following, I will return to it frequently (or whenever I see it is on the first page) to see what the current situation is.

Someone earlier mentioned that "if Gaile receives a response from the devs that “we’re not working on it at this time”, or “we’re not allowed to talk about that”, then what should she do? I say again that THAT should be communicated to us, along with maybe a brief statement as to why. Simply leaving the players in the dark with no further contact is the worst possible course of action, because that just leaves people feeling like they’re being ignored or dismissed. I surmise that this feeling is largely what has contributed to the general rise in toxicity in the forums over the years, because players feel like “ANet doesn’t care enough to address our concerns”, and this ill-will doesn’t just disappear whenever new content comes out, no matter how fun or awesome it is.

That’s why I raised the idea of having that sticky thread where we can call attention to outstanding issues, because I DO understand that people get busy, that there are many different things on the go at the same time, and sometimes things WILL fall through the cracks. If we can just get some feedback or status updates from time to time on matters of importance to different player circles, it might make a world of difference.

As stated though, you can’t go by the number of views and posts in a thread. Some people will just bump posts to keep them up. A thread with just 2 posts in it might be just as important as a thread with over 500 posts. How does ANET pick and choose what is important?

It’s one of those things that can only be addressed by having a staff member whose specifically involved looking through the forum and responding to posts, alas. I can’t think of any way that this could be automated because people would find a way to get around it; only a real life human reading the thread would be able to make that call.

(As Gaile said though, somebody constantly bumping their own thread would run the risk of getting their thread locked or moderated.)

Zaxares.5419:

It’s one of those things that can only be addressed by having a staff member whose specifically involved looking through the forum and responding to posts, alas. I can’t think of any way that this could be automated because people would find a way to get around it; only a real life human reading the thread would be able to make that call.

(As Gaile said though, somebody constantly bumping their own thread would run the risk of getting their thread locked or moderated.)

I agree but I have one question. We all know that ANET doesn’t/ can’t read every single post in every single thread, it’s not humanly possible. So how does ANET pick and choose what they read and respond to? Is it catchy titles? Reported threads? Maybe even a pm to a staff member (which is not allowed)? I have no idea but it’s back to work for me tomorrow so I might not be posting as much. If anyone cares about this thread, please keep it going. I’m not talking about bumping it up for the sake of bumping it up either. If you have any more thoughts or ideas to contribute, please do so.

I think the dungeon forums are an interesting example. A while back when the SAB kitten hit the fan and people were going crazy, a red post popped in the dungeon forums promising to listen to feedback. People went crazy, omg they care about us! etc etc.

This only happened due to mass outrage on reddit and etc, so someone got sent in for damage control to settle the mouthfrothers down. A couple months later and it’s back to the same old.

The main issue is the amount of times legitimate concerns have been left to fester and rot away in that subforum. Rarely if ever is ‘feedback’ acted upon, someone just comes in once or twice a year and reassures people that they are ‘listening’. I think many of us can fully understand if at this point, all you can do is ‘listen’ and do nothing due to resource shortages etc, but the way in which things have been phrased gives people false hope. They waste hours of their time writing up posts and arguing amongst themselves and for no real result. If we had a stickied thread at the top for ‘communication’ I’m not sure how it would change this situation.

I also agree that it’s hard to know which problems are more important than others when you heap them all into one thread, every tom kitten and jerry will want to throw his 2 cents in. Perhaps there should be a more visible ‘thumbs up’ method, with posts that receive the higher numbers of thumbs up from players coming up first in that thread to be more easily picked out.

That’s a good point there, Eberle. Feedback and promises need to be followed up with concrete action, or, if no action is forthcoming, then we need to be informed or updated so people don’t get their hopes up. (It’s still a rotten situation if that’s the case, but it’s better than just waiting and hoping in vain.)

Again, that’s why one of my original suggestions was that each major sub-forum should have its own dev representative, so that the burden doesn’t just fall squarely on Gaile or any single person. John Smith is doing a great job for the BLTC forum, as are Maclaine Diemer and Cody Crichton in the Audio forum. We need more people to handle the Living World forum, the Dungeon forum, the PvP (although this one has been getting more attention of late) forum and the WvW forum. Possibly the Crafting and Racial forums could use one too, but these tend to be slower moving and don’t require as much feedback.

Zaxares.5419:

That’s a good point there, Eberle. Feedback and promises need to be followed up with concrete action, or, if no action is forthcoming, then we need to be informed or updated so people don’t get their hopes up. (It’s still a rotten situation if that’s the case, but it’s better than just waiting and hoping in vain.)

Again, that’s why one of my original suggestions was that each major sub-forum should have its own dev representative, so that the burden doesn’t just fall squarely on Gaile or any single person. John Smith is doing a great job for the BLTC forum, as are Maclaine Diemer and Cody Crichton in the Audio forum. We need more people to handle the Living World forum, the Dungeon forum, the PvP (although this one has been getting more attention of late) forum and the WvW forum. Possibly the Crafting and Racial forums could use one too, but these tend to be slower moving and don’t require as much feedback.

This is initially how I worked in a previous environment regarding forum-based information-gathering and it was very effective for some and not at all for others.

That said, it’s a much more viable way to handle a community this size than having just a few dedicated forum/player-communication heads try and look at everything.

Or rather, perhaps give a dev a section to examine, and have forum staff look into threads as a whole and report the particularly important ones and common trends and tendencies so that at least the time spent by developers is spent in the right areas.

I was thinking and maybe this has been suggested in the past, what if some neutral/ unbiased forum members volunteered to read the forums on a daily basis. Every week the members would post the most important issues in to a single thread and then if the devs agree, approved issues could be copied in to a locked sticky thread with weekly or monthly updates. Another possible solution is maybe take a weekly poll/vote on top issues of the week. Maybe all forum members can participate in this one.