Guild Wars 2

I’m trying to tread carefully, here. I want this to be constructive and helpful. Please read this with that tone in mind.

A lot of statements and communication tend to get buried, either in the forum or by virtue of not being mentioned on the official forum. When you [ANET] tweet something important, or post something important on facebook, or give an interview at a con, or write a forum thread with key information [Like the information about the dungeon team being disbanded, or the update on precursor hunts], could you have a dedicated forum with links/transcripts/quotes of those things? Often, here on the forum, little things are dropped into specific threads that people might not even associate with the information. “I Have A Question About The Economy” talked about 2013’s Halloween candy sinks, for example.

Mike O’Brien’s thread about better communication would have been well-served by being in a more visible location. I’d be happy to flag posts (and I’m sure I’m not the only one) to help the mods more easily identify these sorts of things. It’s really weird that a company as old as ANET doesn’t have any centralized aggregate of all their news.

Yes…I miss the ‘Round-up’ articles in the old Blog, as well. A central clearing-house for information would be much appreciated.

It would be great to have a centralized location for all of the important updates, interviews, etc, to go.

Perhaps someone on the clock (Gaile’s team?) or a player with a lot of time/motivation could start up a wiki page to accumulate this info? I’d rather it go on the forums, though — after all, I think the New and Announcements forum is intended for this, but it hasn’t been touched in 7 months. Why is that?

Well there is the Linksville section of the forum but considering how far away it is from the main boards (you mean I have to scroll!!) few players would see them there. But of course that’s mainly useful for news articles and not social media venues for news.

Behellagh.1468:

Well there is the Linksville section of the forum but considering how far away it is from the main boards (you mean I have to scroll!!) few players would see them there. But of course that’s mainly useful for news articles and not social media venues for news.

Does ANET post links to all of their important information there, or is it players posting links? I’m talking about ANET linking all of their updates in one place.

I was just saying there was a board for links. I agree they need something up there with news for those interested.

So, is it unreasonable to request you centralize your information, ANET? That way you won’t have people claiming there are no updates, because everyone will know where to go to find out the same information.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Guhracie — I think your tone was very polite and constructive, and thanks for that, and for your suggestions.

I think what you’re suggesting is that we have a dedicated page in the News and Announcements Forum that listed external updates: a blog post here, an interview there, that sort of thing? So you’re thinking public information provided elsewhere might be gathered in a sticky post in that forum?

As to trying to provide links to informative forum posts, well, that’s precisely why we offer the Dev Tracker. In the Dev Tracker, forum members who are interested in learning the latest from the team can see what was said in whatever timeframe — the last day, the last week — they want to review. Maybe you mean something different, I’m not sure.

Valuable threads can be stickied in the appropriate forum. But perhaps my team could be more active in making threads sticky, and in removing them from sticky status. There’s nothing that demands that a thread that was stickied in 1998 needs to be stickied today. Maybe a thread is relevant for a week or a month. After that, it can be unsticked. Others that remain relevant forever — like the “Tickets for Review” thread in the Support Sub-forum — should be left in stickied status forever.

Fact is, we don’t want a sticky-fest, where half of the front page of each sub-forum is filled with stickies. On the other hand, being more active with stickies could be very helpful and would keep the forums more current. Let me brainstorm with the team about this idea.

Thanks for a good topic of discussion. Feedback is welcome from anyone who’d care to offer it!

I find the problem with the dev tracker is that 90% of the posts are from customer support and ticket responses that have no bearing on the game itself.

Is there a way that posts from the customer support section could be removed from the dev tracker? I think that would make it much easier to find information.

make a subforum thats like a reddit where the only topics allowed are anet quotes

Dark Age of Camelot used to have a dedicated person right on their front page who did weekly updates, sometimes daily updates, as to what was going on: Sonya Thomas. You could log right on to the Camelot Herald and know with a decent amount of certainty what was getting attention, what wasn’t getting attention, what was being worked on, and what was around the corner. There was also a fair bit of chit-chat type stuff that gave the feeling she was a conscious entity trying to get her knowledge of what was going on out to the community. It felt like she was part of the community speaking like some sagely oracle, honestly. She knew what was going on. How, I have really no idea, but that woman was with it and a good person. Dark Age of Camelot was absolutely unique though. You could give someone every penny you had in that game, ask them to transfer it to an alternative character, and you’d get it back. Most game developers today swing the other way, trying to be some faceless entity that graces us with words long after it has decided a matter of action. It ends up always feeling like we’re in the Court of the Red Queen whose varied personalities randomly flux between Mad-Hatter, Demiurge, and psychotic. I mean that. When people don’t have a voice they feel like they are oppressed. When the face and personality they are talking with today are separate entities from the people deciding what to do tomorrow people start to decide to address the whole convulsion as ‘the entity’; it’s personality quite likely bi-polar and schizophrenic. More often periods of stability in terms of communication feel like conversations with a person in a mania; everything only feels stable only because we’re having an encounter with ‘the entity’ a the center of its present fixation.

Gaile Gray.6029:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Guhracie — I think your tone was very polite and constructive, and thanks for that, and for your suggestions.

I think what you’re suggesting is that we have a dedicated page in the News and Announcements Forum that listed external updates: a blog post here, an interview there, that sort of thing? So you’re thinking public information provided elsewhere might be gathered in a sticky post in that forum?

As to trying to provide links to informative forum posts, well, that’s precisely why we offer the Dev Tracker. In the Dev Tracker, forum members who are interested in learning the latest from the team can see what was said in whatever timeframe — the last day, the last week — they want to review. Maybe you mean something different, I’m not sure.

Valuable threads can be stickied in the appropriate forum. But perhaps my team could be more active in making threads sticky, and in removing them from sticky status. There’s nothing that demands that a thread that was stickied in 1998 needs to be stickied today. Maybe a thread is relevant for a week or a month. After that, it can be unsticked. Others that remain relevant forever — like the “Tickets for Review” thread in the Support Sub-forum — should be left in stickied status forever.

Fact is, we don’t want a sticky-fest, where half of the front page of each sub-forum is filled with stickies. On the other hand, being more active with stickies could be very helpful and would keep the forums more current. Let me brainstorm with the team about this idea.

Thanks for a good topic of discussion. Feedback is welcome from anyone who’d care to offer it!

I find the problem with the dev tracker is that 90% of the posts are from customer support and ticket responses that have no bearing on the game itself.

Is there a way that posts from the customer support section could be removed from the dev tracker? I think that would make it much easier to find information.

I don’t think there’s a way to weight responses, to analyze “This is about the game” and “this is about an account/technical issue.” And what one person might feel isn’t of interest another might find of value, like the response to a technical support problem that affects them, as well.

I can investigate if we want to get more granular on tracking as far as support versus non-support, but I believe we’ll find that it’s not practical nor possible.

I do appreciate the idea, though, and the chance to think it through.

What if the Dev tracker section was reformatted so each ANet staffer who posts has his own thread? It will look rather like a regular forum section but instead of individual threads there are ANet staffer names, and of course non staff members can’t post in there. It’s a read only forum to us.

For example:
Forum
Dev Tracker posts
Gaile Gray
Justin ODell
Josh Davis
Evan Lesh
(Etc…)

To read a particular Staffer’s posts then you click on the name and it takes you directly to that person’s posts. This forum can have threads under the ANet Staff Name threads where any staffer can make a thread with an announcement or special information. It could be the central spot for any news ANet wants people to know. The threads might says no more than, read [link to twitter] about topic Y or read [link to internet gaming site] about the latest interview on topic X. It could have it’s own stickied thread section with posts that the staffers thinks are of particular importance.

To work properly it will need 3 sections.
1) A red stickied section.
2) An ANet Staff section.
3) An announcement thread section.

If that’s not possible for some reason then maybe 2 forums with one having the Dev tracker and the other having the announcement threads and the stickied threads.

Dear Gaile, other devs or other A-net employees, and/or other forumites, sometimes there comes a time, when a man wants to have a drunken ramble, at 5 am, about communication and the means of delivering the news of mmorpg.

Worry not, I’ll be constructive and I’ll try to stay on topic as much as I can. These are my opinions and other people may feel differently.

First thing I would like to quote Gaile:

Gaile Gray.6029:

I think what you’re suggesting is that we have a dedicated page in the News and Announcements Forum that listed external updates: a blog post here, an interview there, that sort of thing? So you’re thinking public information provided elsewhere might be gathered in a sticky post in that forum?

Yes. In fact, every newsworthy item should posted in most portals if not all of them. And they should be all archived in the news & announcements forums. With open discussion enabled, meaning every newsworthy item should have its own thread. Like my fellow forumite, Guhracie, said many interesting things, whether it be important to a player or not, get buried in the forums, or in the worst case doesn’t get mentioned at the forums at all.

Many news, many promotions & sales, many interviews, many things, in fact most of the news I get second hand even though I am an active forum reader myself. This isn’t a bad thing itself, I know, as everyone doesn’t use the forums, but let’s say I had a 2 month break and I wanted to know what’s been happening during the break. I would have to basicly comb through endless amounts threads and reddit posts. Thats why archiving news in a known, separated, chronologically logic, uncluttered place, like the news and announcement forums, would be a good thing.

I mentioned that every newsworthy item should be posted in every news portal. And I mean everything. Hotfix changes, free bl items, that interesting (newsworthy) dev post in the 25th page of that really interesting thread.

Why everywhere? Why everything? Because I hate missing out. I tend to read most of the things I see carefully, unless I know what it’s telling me, or I’m in a hurry. Sometimes when I log in, I may not read the news in the start panel. I don’t use facebook, I don’t use twitter, (I know I’m a minority here), but if the news were organised in the news & announcements forum, I know I could ALWAYS find the newest items there.

Remember that set of those nailbiter pvp matches between Made in Meta and The Civilized Gentlemen few weeks ago? I loved those matches and I’m not even interested in pvp. It was linked to me by my friend and the link, I think, was in a news article, but I’m having a really hard time finding it again to show to other people.

The news in the frontpage are chronologically organised, but I think it’s a bit laborious to go through (especially when trying to find something specific without decent knowledge) and has some room for improvement.

Anything newsworthy that gets mentioned in facebook or twitter should also be mentioned should also be mentioned in the front page and game start panel, and therefore also archived in the news and announcements forum as a thread, whether it be something big, or even if it’s slightly silly. All this with open discussion in the thread.

As my beverages are running out, I’m running out of words to contribute this thread. I’ll check this post at morning for spelling mistakes and such. Good morning, good evening and good night o/

The problem with the Dev Tracker, and this goes along with the problem with search, is that we can’t see all the Dev responses for a single forum. As Astral demonstrates, we can see all the posts from a single Dev/ANet rep easily enough.

What I don’t understand is why do you think it’s difficult to have a locked topic in the news section where someone posts links to external articles going forward? Whoever handles PR for you should know when staff were interviewed and by whom.

Whoever is doing your social media shouldn’t be revealing exclusives only to those on social media. I admit I’m a Luddite when it comes to social media but I already come to your official forums, why do I need to check your other outlets to get up to the date info?

I agree with the feedback that’s been provided thus far, and would like to add that it’s not just about external interviews. One of my biggest issues with communication is people not having access to the same level of information. I’d like to see it set up with a locked thread for links to external interviews, but also for topics of concern, including:

Precursor crafting
NPE changes
Gem conversion updates
Communication
Traits
Wardrobe/Outfits
Anything pertaining to gem refunds/item exchanges (like the unlimited harvesting tools)
Personal story
Conditions in PvE
Megaserver
Updates on known bugs
CDI discussions
Game Modes
Super Adventure Box

Basically, if a dev posts in a massive and/or merged topic, there should be a mirroring topic in the “news” section, which also contains the post. That way, when somebody asks me for a source when I say that the dungeon team has been disbanded, all I have to do is go to the news section and look for the dev thread with all the comments on dungeons.

It might be asking a lot to do retroactively, but given the alleged desire for better communication, it seems worth the effort. It’s just tiresome hearing the same arguments about what was said and where and by whom, and the ANET blog and forum is just useless in this regard.

Ah, this thread had taken a different turn since I first saw it, and it seems like we had similar ideas. I made another thread about something along the same lines, maybe they should be merged?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Suggestion-Sticky-for-FAQ-type-topics

If not, ignore this post

Two possible improvements:

• create a forum with live copies of “red” threads, can be a read only forum.
  Advantages are the better visibility of thread size, full title and prevention of more than one post in the dev tracker per thread.

At the moment, if there is a thread like the communication thread, the dev tracker will be filled rather quickly with dev responses but at the same time pushing other threads with responses further down, not helping their visibility.

• Option 2 would be adjusting the dev tracker to show the forum where it was posted instead of “in dev tracker”

Profession Swapping In New Syst….?

in Dev Tracker <—— should read “structured pvp”

Posted by: Justin ODell

Now, my first thought when reading this was “wow finally profession swapping? New System??!! final….oooh…it’s pvp… :/ nevermind then”

Also, there are users who make fantastic summaries of the CDI threads, maybe offer something alike for any “hot topic”.
It might look like more work but preventing misinformation might as well save you equal amount or more time as well as getting the right information out there

What would be great is the ability to click on the red tag icon next to a thread title and go immediately to the first Dev post since you have visited that thread. Or, barring that, the first Dev post in the thread, since we can use the arrows on Dev posts to navigate to the next, and previous posts.

One thing about the Dev Tracker that isn’t so great is if you click on the thread, it does not always take you to the Dev post. Sometimes, it takes you odd places, no where near the Dev post you are looking at, or even a Dev post, period. That can become irksome in long threads.

And a question I have always had…why doesn’t the Dev Tracker sub-forum ever refresh? All other sub-forum titles turn grey if you visit them, and turn back to black once there is a new post. Dev Tracker never turns grey. Seems odd. =/

Astral Projections.7320:

Gaile Gray.6029:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Guhracie — I think your tone was very polite and constructive, and thanks for that, and for your suggestions.

I think what you’re suggesting is that we have a dedicated page in the News and Announcements Forum that listed external updates: a blog post here, an interview there, that sort of thing? So you’re thinking public information provided elsewhere might be gathered in a sticky post in that forum?

As to trying to provide links to informative forum posts, well, that’s precisely why we offer the Dev Tracker. In the Dev Tracker, forum members who are interested in learning the latest from the team can see what was said in whatever timeframe — the last day, the last week — they want to review. Maybe you mean something different, I’m not sure.

Valuable threads can be stickied in the appropriate forum. But perhaps my team could be more active in making threads sticky, and in removing them from sticky status. There’s nothing that demands that a thread that was stickied in 1998 needs to be stickied today. Maybe a thread is relevant for a week or a month. After that, it can be unsticked. Others that remain relevant forever — like the “Tickets for Review” thread in the Support Sub-forum — should be left in stickied status forever.

Fact is, we don’t want a sticky-fest, where half of the front page of each sub-forum is filled with stickies. On the other hand, being more active with stickies could be very helpful and would keep the forums more current. Let me brainstorm with the team about this idea.

Thanks for a good topic of discussion. Feedback is welcome from anyone who’d care to offer it!

I find the problem with the dev tracker is that 90% of the posts are from customer support and ticket responses that have no bearing on the game itself.

Is there a way that posts from the customer support section could be removed from the dev tracker? I think that would make it much easier to find information.

I don’t think there’s a way to weight responses, to analyze “This is about the game” and “this is about an account/technical issue.” And what one person might feel isn’t of interest another might find of value, like the response to a technical support problem that affects them, as well.

I can investigate if we want to get more granular on tracking as far as support versus non-support, but I believe we’ll find that it’s not practical nor possible.

I do appreciate the idea, though, and the chance to think it through.

What if the Dev tracker section was reformatted so each ANet staffer who posts has his own thread? It will look rather like a regular forum section but instead of individual threads there are ANet staffer names, and of course non staff members can’t post in there. It’s a read only forum to us.

For example:
Forum
Dev Tracker posts
Gaile Gray
Justin ODell
Josh Davis
Evan Lesh
(Etc…)

To read a particular Staffer’s posts then you click on the name and it takes you directly to that person’s posts. This forum can have threads under the ANet Staff Name threads where any staffer can make a thread with an announcement or special information. It could be the central spot for any news ANet wants people to know. The threads might says no more than, read [link to twitter] about topic Y or read [link to internet gaming site] about the latest interview on topic X. It could have it’s own stickied thread section with posts that the staffers thinks are of particular importance.

To work properly it will need 3 sections.
1) A red stickied section.
2) An ANet Staff section.
3) An announcement thread section.

If that’s not possible for some reason then maybe 2 forums with one having the Dev tracker and the other having the announcement threads and the stickied threads.

I full heartedly support this idea !

+1

Gaile Gray.6029:

Guhracie — I think your tone was very polite and constructive, and thanks for that, and for your suggestions.

I think what you’re suggesting is that we have a dedicated page in the News and Announcements Forum that listed external updates: a blog post here, an interview there, that sort of thing? So you’re thinking public information provided elsewhere might be gathered in a sticky post in that forum?

As to trying to provide links to informative forum posts, well, that’s precisely why we offer the Dev Tracker. In the Dev Tracker, forum members who are interested in learning the latest from the team can see what was said in whatever timeframe — the last day, the last week — they want to review. Maybe you mean something different, I’m not sure.

Valuable threads can be stickied in the appropriate forum. But perhaps my team could be more active in making threads sticky, and in removing them from sticky status. There’s nothing that demands that a thread that was stickied in 1998 needs to be stickied today. Maybe a thread is relevant for a week or a month. After that, it can be unsticked. Others that remain relevant forever — like the “Tickets for Review” thread in the Support Sub-forum — should be left in stickied status forever.

Fact is, we don’t want a sticky-fest, where half of the front page of each sub-forum is filled with stickies. On the other hand, being more active with stickies could be very helpful and would keep the forums more current. Let me brainstorm with the team about this idea.

Thanks for a good topic of discussion. Feedback is welcome from anyone who’d care to offer it!

A sticky would have been usefull to let us know that leaked information on wooden potatoes about item collections during September update was actually an official communication from Anet.

Here is part of the problem, along with a solution.

The problem is posts to facebook, twitter, etc. Don’t always get put here, here being the central place for news and info.

The solution, is to feed a single Tweet/Facebook post/forum post(or news announcement) to all the places! Basically, a fairly simple tool can be built to post to selectable places. This way if you want to make an announcement and you want that info to go everywhere (instead of posting individually), there are tools you can either code or monopolize, to do just that.

You could, in theory, use facebook as your launch pad for updates and grab that feed back here. Since you can update a twitter status using facebook as well. The only thing you would need to do is grab that rss feed and have it post here.

We do a similar thing here
http://northernshiverpeaks.org/index.php?/forum/2-anet-dev-tracker/page-2?prune_day=100&sort_by=Z-A&sort_key=last_post&topicfilter=all
However, i haven’t bothered coding formatting, which wouldn’t take to much effort. Either way, that forum is polling all the things (accept twitter) Arena says around the web.