Guild Wars 2

Anet responses:

Aware, but investigating/deciding
1. An option to disable right click targeting (435 replies, 13263 views)
ANet response – “Our development team reviews play input on a regular basis. They are aware of this suggestion, but have not yet reached a decision on what changes, if any, they will make to targeting.
There is a lot going on right now with the upcoming event, but after that, the team will take a look at a lot of different game elements, and may make some changes in the future.
Sorry I don’t have more specific information, but you can be sure this is not being ignored or rejected without due consideration.
Thanks for understanding.” (low priority statement from another forum section was shared by a player on pg. 8 )
2. Turn off “Titles” below Nameplate (153 replies, 6339 views)
Anet response – “As with any change we are aware of the concerns about titles, nameplates, and screen clutter and we are investigating what we can do about all of these things to try and improve the experience now that you can see so many people on screen.”
3. No love for condition builds? (105 replies, 19075 views)
Anet response – “I certainly agree that we need to improve effectiveness of condition damage builds against objects. We have some ideas, but none of them are simple and easy to implement/test. Rest assured it is something we recognize as a problem.” – “Might as well chime in and say big crowd events where condies are stack capped is also a problem we are investigating.”
4. Traits missing vital informations in tooltips to make info (52 replies, 9598 views)
Anet response – I understand the frustrations that come with inaccurate descriptions. I’ve worked a lot on the skill “fact” system to bring it up to a good point, but I know there is more we can do. This includes making all buffs, upgrades, sigils, and traits affect skill tooltip numbers (some already do), adding additional skill facts based on traits, as well as adding the same or similar “fact” system to trait descriptions.
There are a couple reasons why trait/skill descriptions aren’t as accurate as they could be. They were constantly changing up until ship for balance and polish. This means some of the descriptions are just out of date. Also, each time a number is changed within the text, it needs to get localized again. This means it’s more efficient to make them a little more vague to lessen the localization cost and protect ourselves if that number needs to change again. That’s why skills have “facts” instead of baking the numbers into the descriptions. The last reason it’s difficult to keep skills and traits accurate is because of technical and time limitations. Our skills are complicated, and it takes designers a lot of time to make sure the numerous parts are correct. Sometimes we don’t even have the ability to make the facts accurate (summon’s damage was a tricky one).
I’m personally very passionate about skill descriptions. We know there are improvements that can be made and I’ll push to get time to revisit them because, well, I just like them.

Non-substantive responses
5. Attention! [April 1st troll face suggestion] (45 replies, 5373 views]
Anet response – “Doing something fun on April 1st is a good idea, hmmm…”
6. Color bling gamers: Issues seeing red circles (137 replies, 9891 views)
Anet response – “Thanks for the suggestion, Timebomb. If anyone else has suggestions of their own, don’t be sure to create a thread yourself. That’s what this sub-forum is for.”
7. Weapon scaling and asura (84 replies, 4075 views)
Anet reponse – “Hi Mythazor,
your thread will be moved to the suggestions sub-forum, where it belongs.
Thanks for understanding.”
8. Combat UI improvements [locked] (363 replies, 13131 views)
Anet response – Moderator made the following statement, but did not provide a line to the source, “Since the position of Anet has been stated regarding the use of this mod, this thread is closed.”

Commitment to fix asap
9. Revert changes in corrupted shortbow (33 replies, 5032)
Anet reponse – “Hey guys! Very sorry about this. Looks like the Shortbow had been using the Longbow model and I fixed that when I hooked up their new icons to use the correct model file, not realizing that the Shortbow was so different looking from the Longbow (usually the shortbow versions are just a little shorter than the longbow). You are absolutely correct to be bummed out, the Longbow has a lot of majesty that the Shortbow does not. So we are going to adjust the Shortbow model to look a lot more like the Longbow. Very very sorry about this! It was certainly not my intention to nerf your awesome bows. We are working on this fix as I type. It might be too late to get it into our next bug fixing build (today or tomorrow) but it will definitely get into our February build at the latest. Again, so very sorry!”

Threads that do not offer specific suggestions where a response might be expected (community brainstorming and a bug):

1. You are now ArenaNet’s lead designer (242 replies, 6958 views)
2. The top 10 things GW2 needs to improve (175 replies, 4123 views)
3. The Great Dream Patch: Add Your Own! (67 replies, 9523 views)
4. Show Profession Trainers on Hoelbrak map? (Bug) (5 replies, 4184 views)

Cool research. Links would be cool as well

For the trolling posts, report them.
I’ve posted a lot in the Suggestions forum recently and some of mine are on the wilder side, concerning gameplay mechanics rather than more traditional things.
A few people quite often don’t get them or resent them and post disparaging remarks or outright trolls.
On reporting them, I’ve found the moderator team over in Suggestions to be quick and efficient, and the offending post usually disappears in a few minutes.

However, try not to report posts that are simply discussing the topic from an opposing point of view! No matter that their opinion may be the opposite of yours, they may very well have good points.

Try to keep your reports to the obvious trolls, one-liners and spammers.

Just a few things.

1: Dyes – Please make them account bound:
this was a change late in beta info when it happened there was indeed a large thread with anet responses. info on reddit the blog detailing the account wide stuff is cached here

2: Combat UI improvements

The response was illogical, the suggestion was for the features of the mod to be incorporated in to the game.

3: According to this post

“The large number of suggestions in different sub-forums is impacting discussion in those different sub-forums. As such, we’ve decided to open up the Suggestions sub-forum.

Please note that you should not expect a personalized, individual response to your suggestions, due to the massive volume of posts that the Suggestions sub-forum will generate.

Please also note that the Suggestions sub-forum will not be open permanently. This is a temporary solution until we roll out a better, more organized way to provide suggestions to the development team than using the forums.
Thank you for your understanding."

but after 7 months you would think they would create a more organised system (see here)

and could you please edit you post to include the links

Posts are too long to edit. Here are the links.

No response from Anet:

1. A client for Linux
2. Consider adding cyrillic alphabet
3. There is no real way to be ‘invisible’ or anonymous
4. Camera-Related Issues: Compilation and Lengthy Anaylsis
5. Skinny female in Guild Wars 2
6. Magic find obsession needs to be addressed
7. Should outdoor boss events drop loot?
8. Dyes – Please make them account bound
9. Reforging Orr with WvW mechanics
10. Largos must be a new race
11. Why can’t Superior Runes be Mystic Forged?
12. Change female heavy Arah armor back to its beta model
13. Why don’t transmute stones allow us to look the way we want
14. Solo Dungeons
15. Adjustable Camera Pivot Height
16. Housing? [locked]
17. Why not make legendaries accountbound?
18. ‘Underflow’ Shards – for Underpopulated Zones
19. The multi-guild system & why guilds are pointless.
20. Here’s how to fix the precursor complaints
21. 09/24 midnight has passed, wheres the patch? Oh right..
22. Black Lion Chest- Upgrading or Cheaper keys [Merged]
23. Sexier Armor Plox
24. Waypoint costs

Anet responses:
Aware, but investigating/deciding
1. An option to disable right click targeting
2. Turn off “Titles” below Nameplate
3. No love for condition builds?
4. Traits missing vital informations in tooltips to make info

Non-substantive responses
5. Attention! [April 1st troll face suggestion]
6. Color bling gamers: Issues seeing red circles
7. Weapon scaling and asura
8. Combat UI improvements [locked]

Commitment to fix asap
9. Revert changes in corrupted shortbow

Threads that do not offer a single, specific suggestion to which Anet could reasonably respond (community brainstorming and a bug):

1. You are now ArenaNet’s lead designer
2. The top 10 things GW2 needs to improve
3. The Great Dream Patch: Add Your Own!
4. Show Profession Trainers on Hoelbrak map?

This thread will probably be moved to the dead suggestion forum for having ‘suggestion’ in the title.

Heh just goes to show how much “suggestions” are looked upon with the company, I don’t expect responses to everything but some of those suggestions seemed pretty good to me and deserved some thought..

I’d guess that it’s not uncommon for suggestions to only be looked at when they have nothing else to do.

I really hope they bring in decent player housing soon. Games like EQ2 were awesome for this and kept people coming back and back, as well as creating whole sub-genres of crafting and collecting.

Blizzard promised player housing in WoW at the beginning, then completely forgot it. I really hope ArenaNet won’t do that too

Very nice investigation. This should be looked on by somebody in Anet.
But have in mind that not all suggestions are viable. And even for those that are, is not as easy as to just implement it. They need to make a impact analisys and gather to try of address any exploit that might come out of that decisition.
Remember it is a product that will come out to the hands of literally millions of people that constantly try to break it and will complaint about it.

As simple as a change might seem, is not as easy as to say “hey, this is cool, lets implement it.” Its a whole process. And often, the person who gives the suggestion is unaware of what the changes might implie.

Dante.1508:

Heh just goes to show how much “suggestions” are looked upon with the company, I don’t expect responses to everything but some of those suggestions seemed pretty good to me and deserved some thought..

I’m not sure what the OP is getting at, the # of views does not indicate agreement or even concern. Post a controversial topic in General like “Suggestion: Give every player a random precursor” and there will be a couple hundred responses and thousands of looksies, but it’s a horrible idea and Anet is not even going to take it under consideration.

Anet devs and community managers can’t spend all day reading, discussing, and responding to posts here, so they aren’t going to. It’s at their discretion when an issue is important enough to post about, like the post explaining their plans behind the Living Story updates. Read the responses to Colin’s post in that thread to see what happens when a “red” name pokes his head into the forums for a moment and you’ll see why they don’t do it very often.

For legal reasons, they may not be allowed to respond to some suggestions. Say you post an idea about a new class that wears heavy armor and uses guns as the main weapon, and by some coincidence they have a similar class in development. If the devs respond to your post, and a month later the class is introduced, some people will try to sue the company claiming that they stole the idea, and use the official response to try to support their case. It’s easier and safer not to respond at all than to open themselves to these kinds of problems.

Feel free to make any suggestions you want, but don’t expect an answer.

I changed “concern” to “traffic” to make the presentation more neutral – "I was trying to be fair in selecting a view count that I thought reflected enough traffic in the forum community to warrant a response. "

I intentionally shared the data without an editorial comment on my interpretation. These are not my suggestions. Most are suggestions I have no interest in. The relevant data point is the traffic to response ratio. I shared the suggestions so that the quality of those suggestions and the relevance of the response ratio could be judged by the reader.

Number of views =/= importance. You’re using the wrong measurement.

tolunart.2095:

Number of views =/= importance. You’re using the wrong measurement.

Not strictly, obviously. What is a better measurement to which we have access?

Guns and Giblets.9308:

tolunart.2095:

Number of views =/= importance. You’re using the wrong measurement.

Not strictly, obviously. What is a better measurement to which we have access?

There isn’t really any. I guess you could use post count as a measurement on whether or not a suggestion has some sort of importance to the player-base, but even that won’t show if they all support it or not.

TriggerSad.2597:

There isn’t really any. I guess you could use post count as a measurement on whether or not a suggestion has some sort of importance to the player-base, but even that won’t show if they all support it or not.

Correct, even if there are a lot of posts, how much of it may be the OP arguing his point with people who don’t like the suggestion? All you’re doing is saying “these topics have a lot of activity” without indication of the quality of the suggestion.

I could post “Get rid of zerk gear and close CoF P1” and a rant about how the game would be so much more fun without glass cannons and speed runs. Just because it gets 1,000 views and 400 posts within 24 hours doesn’t make it a good suggestion, especially if 100 of the posts are me defending my position. The devs can pretty much tell they aren’t going to follow my advice just by reading the title. There’s nothing there that will compel an official response.

As the red post above points out, suggestion threads are gathered in one place so that the staff can easily read them and consider what is being discussed. But in most cases they won’t have the opportunity (or will not be allowed) to comment within the thread.

You people don’t even know how good you have it.

Go look at the FFXI or FFXIV forums. Good luck finding a dev response.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

As was mentioned earlier in this thread, we have stated that we are unable to provide a reply to all suggestions posted in the suggestion subforum.

We do, however, regularly read the suggestions forum and deliver feedback to the design team on a daily basis. Just because you haven’t seen a reply does not mean it’s not being read.

Just because we haven’t seen a reply, it doesn’t mean it’s not being read.

If everything was supposed to be under this guise of understanding, there wouldn’t be something called ‘communication’.

If we could trust every change to the game so far to feel… satisfying, we’d have this implicit trust.

We don’t.

Darx.9842:

You people don’t even know how good you have it.

Go look at the FFXI or FFXIV forums. Good luck finding a dev response.

That wasn’t a game that tried to boast communication between their playerbase and devs.

This one did.

Darx.9842:

You people don’t even know how good you have it.

Go look at the FFXI or FFXIV forums. Good luck finding a dev response.

Lol you won’t.

Although I really enjoyed City of Heroes primarily because of it’s dev discussion and replies. Actually, that was the first ever game I had played where the people working on the game acknowledged and actively participated in discussion with their player base which kept me playing it for a long long time (2 years after it was released until it was shut down).

Palleon.1657:

I really hope they bring in decent player housing soon. Games like EQ2 were awesome for this and kept people coming back and back, as well as creating whole sub-genres of crafting and collecting.

Blizzard promised player housing in WoW at the beginning, then completely forgot it. I really hope ArenaNet won’t do that too

While nice, housing is often just a fluff, and I vote for Guild Halls I mean heaven’s sake, Guild Wars 1 had em and they were kinda important…and many people are dissapointed that it’s not in the game at all.

Also: it would be great to make this a sticky.

tolunart.2095:

…
Feel free to make any suggestions you want, but don’t expect an answer.

You are obviously right and based on personal experience from my place of work, I find that absolutely appalling.

Our company recieves 4-5 suggestions from clients every day and the company policy is that all employees must act on any suggestion they recieve. We are required to rate and/or forward any suggestions to relevant persons/dept.
At the most basic level all client suggestions will be acknowledged and the client is thanked for showing interest.
We have several product improvements and services that can be directly linked to suggestions from our customers and their involvement is considered a valuable asset to the company.

I guess the computer gaming industry is still very young as client suggestions defaults to being considered a liability.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

As was mentioned earlier in this thread, we have stated that we are unable to provide a reply to all suggestions posted in the suggestion subforum.

We do, however, regularly read the suggestions forum and deliver feedback to the design team on a daily basis. Just because you haven’t seen a reply does not mean it’s not being read.

I really don’t think it was being suggested that it was the expectation that all suggestions in the entire subforum receive a reply. However, perhaps you could take from this that, among some of your customers, a perception exists that communication could be better. There is always room for improvement, yes?

Halandir.3609:

tolunart.2095:

…
Feel free to make any suggestions you want, but don’t expect an answer.

You are obviously right and based on personal experience from my place of work, I find that absolutely appalling.

Our company recieves 4-5 suggestions from clients every day and the company policy is that all employees must act on any suggestion they recieve. We are required to rate and/or forward any suggestions to relevant persons/dept.
At the most basic level all client suggestions will be acknowledged and the client is thanked for showing interest.
We have several product improvements and services that can be directly linked to suggestions from our customers and their involvement is considered a valuable asset to the company.

I guess the computer gaming industry is still very young as client suggestions defaults to being considered a liability.

you do relize that anet has a slightly higher flow of feedback then your company, and that 90% of said feedback isn’t very good, right?

kitanas.3596:

Halandir.3609:

tolunart.2095:

…
Feel free to make any suggestions you want, but don’t expect an answer.

You are obviously right and based on personal experience from my place of work, I find that absolutely appalling.

Our company recieves 4-5 suggestions from clients every day and the company policy is that all employees must act on any suggestion they recieve. We are required to rate and/or forward any suggestions to relevant persons/dept.
At the most basic level all client suggestions will be acknowledged and the client is thanked for showing interest.
We have several product improvements and services that can be directly linked to suggestions from our customers and their involvement is considered a valuable asset to the company.

I guess the computer gaming industry is still very young as client suggestions defaults to being considered a liability.

you do relize that anet has a slightly higher flow of feedback then your company, and that 90% of said feedback isn’t very good, right?

Yeah… that seems like sort of a silly comparison. 4-5 a day it makes sense to acknowledge all of them. That’s maybe a half hour out of someone’s day, tops. Hundreds of suggestions a day… not so much. If they “acknowledged” all of them it would either have to be a bot that posted a generic “thank you for your suggestion” message, or they’d have to hire several people full time to post generic “thank you for your suggestion” messages. Neither of those is a good option.

I think this guy just unintentionally proved the point that many of the suggestions on these forums aren’t very good ideas.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

As was mentioned earlier in this thread, we have stated that we are unable to provide a reply to all suggestions posted in the suggestion subforum.

We do, however, regularly read the suggestions forum and deliver feedback to the design team on a daily basis. Just because you haven’t seen a reply does not mean it’s not being read.

I don’t think anyone would blame the ANet dev team for not responding to each and every suggestion, even ones of merit or popularity. That would be unreasonable. However, whenever the team does respond it sounds an awful lot like PR talk to me, and not even enthusiastic PR talk at that. It’s many many variations on a cold and distant “we’ll consider it.”

I’ll agree that some response is better than no response, but I’ll argue that some reasoning, even faulty reasoning, is better than no reasoning. There’s no rational in PR talk. We don’t know what the devs are doing given the limitations they’re working with, because they don’t bother tell us. Not clearly, anyway. This not only gives the impressions of a large distance between player and dev, but also stretches the players’ patience and confidence in the dev team.

Terra Dactyl.2047:

kitanas.3596:

Halandir.3609:

tolunart.2095:

…
Feel free to make any suggestions you want, but don’t expect an answer.

You are obviously right and based on personal experience from my place of work, I find that absolutely appalling.

Our company recieves 4-5 suggestions from clients every day and the company policy is that all employees must act on any suggestion they recieve. We are required to rate and/or forward any suggestions to relevant persons/dept.
At the most basic level all client suggestions will be acknowledged and the client is thanked for showing interest.
We have several product improvements and services that can be directly linked to suggestions from our customers and their involvement is considered a valuable asset to the company.

I guess the computer gaming industry is still very young as client suggestions defaults to being considered a liability.

you do relize that anet has a slightly higher flow of feedback then your company, and that 90% of said feedback isn’t very good, right?

Yeah… that seems like sort of a silly comparison. 4-5 a day it makes sense to acknowledge all of them. That’s maybe a half hour out of someone’s day, tops. Hundreds of suggestions a day… not so much. If they “acknowledged” all of them it would either have to be a bot that posted a generic “thank you for your suggestion” message, or they’d have to hire several people full time to post generic “thank you for your suggestion” messages. Neither of those is a good option.

I think this guy just unintentionally proved the point that many of the suggestions on these forums aren’t very good ideas.

Some of the very good ones, like the camera suggestions, have no response at all. I’m guessing intuitive QoL improvements aren’t good ideas?

TwoBit.5903:

Terra Dactyl.2047:

kitanas.3596:

Halandir.3609:

tolunart.2095:

…
Feel free to make any suggestions you want, but don’t expect an answer.

You are obviously right and based on personal experience from my place of work, I find that absolutely appalling.

Our company recieves 4-5 suggestions from clients every day and the company policy is that all employees must act on any suggestion they recieve. We are required to rate and/or forward any suggestions to relevant persons/dept.
At the most basic level all client suggestions will be acknowledged and the client is thanked for showing interest.
We have several product improvements and services that can be directly linked to suggestions from our customers and their involvement is considered a valuable asset to the company.

I guess the computer gaming industry is still very young as client suggestions defaults to being considered a liability.

you do relize that anet has a slightly higher flow of feedback then your company, and that 90% of said feedback isn’t very good, right?

Yeah… that seems like sort of a silly comparison. 4-5 a day it makes sense to acknowledge all of them. That’s maybe a half hour out of someone’s day, tops. Hundreds of suggestions a day… not so much. If they “acknowledged” all of them it would either have to be a bot that posted a generic “thank you for your suggestion” message, or they’d have to hire several people full time to post generic “thank you for your suggestion” messages. Neither of those is a good option.

I think this guy just unintentionally proved the point that many of the suggestions on these forums aren’t very good ideas.

Some of the very good ones, like the camera suggestions, have no response at all. I’m guessing intuitive QoL improvements aren’t good ideas?

“They should respond to every single suggestion because my company that receives 5 or less suggestions a day does” is a bad (and unfair) suggestion/comparison. I don’t know how you took anything more than that from my post.

Terra Dactyl.2047:

TwoBit.5903:

Terra Dactyl.2047:

kitanas.3596:

Halandir.3609:

tolunart.2095:

…
Feel free to make any suggestions you want, but don’t expect an answer.

You are obviously right and based on personal experience from my place of work, I find that absolutely appalling.

Our company recieves 4-5 suggestions from clients every day and the company policy is that all employees must act on any suggestion they recieve. We are required to rate and/or forward any suggestions to relevant persons/dept.
At the most basic level all client suggestions will be acknowledged and the client is thanked for showing interest.
We have several product improvements and services that can be directly linked to suggestions from our customers and their involvement is considered a valuable asset to the company.

I guess the computer gaming industry is still very young as client suggestions defaults to being considered a liability.

you do relize that anet has a slightly higher flow of feedback then your company, and that 90% of said feedback isn’t very good, right?

Yeah… that seems like sort of a silly comparison. 4-5 a day it makes sense to acknowledge all of them. That’s maybe a half hour out of someone’s day, tops. Hundreds of suggestions a day… not so much. If they “acknowledged” all of them it would either have to be a bot that posted a generic “thank you for your suggestion” message, or they’d have to hire several people full time to post generic “thank you for your suggestion” messages. Neither of those is a good option.

I think this guy just unintentionally proved the point that many of the suggestions on these forums aren’t very good ideas.

Some of the very good ones, like the camera suggestions, have no response at all. I’m guessing intuitive QoL improvements aren’t good ideas?

“They should respond to every single suggestion because my company that receives 5 or less suggestions a day does” is a bad (and unfair) suggestion/comparison. I don’t know how you took anything more than that from my post.

I was really responding to the last sentence. But regardless, they don’t have to respond to every suggestion. They can filter them by popularity and view count, and respond to the ones with the highest ratings….like the threads discussing camera issues.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

As was mentioned earlier in this thread, we have stated that we are unable to provide a reply to all suggestions posted in the suggestion subforum.

We do, however, regularly read the suggestions forum and deliver feedback to the design team on a daily basis. Just because you haven’t seen a reply does not mean it’s not being read.

It often feels like it’s not being read… I’m thinking about all the fractal posts out there and not a single one being replied to and not a single one being addressed in patches. Breaks one’s heart.

The main point that I drew from OP’s findings is that ANet simply isn’t in the mindset to respond in general. 805 pages of suggestions, at 30 per page comes to ~24k… That’s a lot of posts, and I don’t think anyone can reasonably expect all of them to have Red Responses. At the same time, that’s 24k since the launch of the game (unless there is a mechanic that has posts with no new response past a certain date falling off) and is an average of 100 posts per day, which is not a lot for a dedicated community support team of more than 2 or 3 individuals.

Add to that the fact that these are many of the highest traffic (And I can acknowledge that # of views and # of posts are both slightly fluffy metrics for traffic, but they are the best we have) threads in the forum, and of the 33 posts that contain discrete suggestions, 24 have no Red Response: 72.72%. Now, it may be that they are being read, and forwarded to devs, and even possibly discussed, but as Uncle Salty pointed out above, ANet made a big deal, both pre- and -post launch about communication with the community. But, as any Jr High student who has taken a speech class can probably tell you, communication is a 2-way cycle, requiring a sender, a message, a recipient, and feedback. Without feedback of any kind, be it verbal, or non-verbal, the sender has no way of knowing if the message was received and understood.

And that is the main issue that I feel this draws attention to. Not the fact that the CM’s need to respond to everything – because they don’t, but that it feels like they respond to almost nothing. Even of the 9 of 33 that did get responses, 4 were insubstantial, and provided no further insight into ANet’s stance on the suggestion being presented.

Enikuo.9205:

Threads that do not offer specific suggestions where a response might be expected (community brainstorming and a bug):

1. You are now ArenaNet’s lead designer
2. The top 10 things GW2 needs to improve
3. The Great Dream Patch: Add Your Own!
4. Show Profession Trainers on Hoelbrak map?

That’s just entitled. You don’t have any right to expect or demand that.

minbariguy.7504:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

As was mentioned earlier in this thread, we have stated that we are unable to provide a reply to all suggestions posted in the suggestion subforum.

We do, however, regularly read the suggestions forum and deliver feedback to the design team on a daily basis. Just because you haven’t seen a reply does not mean it’s not being read.

I really don’t think it was being suggested that it was the expectation that all suggestions in the entire subforum receive a reply. However, perhaps you could take from this that, among some of your customers, a perception exists that communication could be better. There is always room for improvement, yes?

1/ there’s always a perception amongst some of your customers, in every company. Sometimes that means you have to ignore some customers.

2/ no there’s not always room for improvement, especially not when you’re already the best.

TwoBit.5903:

. However, whenever the team does respond it sounds an awful lot like PR talk to me, and not even enthusiastic PR talk at that. It’s many many variations on a cold and distant “we’ll consider it.”

I’ll agree that some response is better than no response, but I’ll argue that some reasoning, even faulty reasoning, is better than no reasoning. There’s no rational in PR talk. We don’t know what the devs are doing given the limitations they’re working with, because they don’t bother tell us. Not clearly, anyway. This not only gives the impressions of a large distance between player and dev, but also stretches the players’ patience and confidence in the dev team.

THe problem is if they are not careful in responses to things like these, giving “PR Speak” as you say, someone will take a response and run with it, saying that this or that dev said something is coming when it’s not, but merely being looked at.

I’ve seen it in CoH, and in other games. It’s right there with the “Devs don’t listen” lie/misstatement (where people seem to think “listen” means “do what we say/want”).

At one point CoH’s devs said power customization wasn’t practical because it would tie up most of their creative resources for a year or so – and people turned that into “never going to happen”. So many were shocked when it happened (after COH got more resources).

marnick.4305:

Enikuo.9205:

Threads that do not offer specific suggestions where a response might be expected (community brainstorming and a bug):

1. You are now ArenaNet’s lead designer
2. The top 10 things GW2 needs to improve
3. The Great Dream Patch: Add Your Own!
4. Show Profession Trainers on Hoelbrak map?

That’s just entitled. You don’t have any right to expect or demand that.

I don’t think that was meant as a statement of expectation, I think it was meant as “Threads that may not get a response because they lack a discrete request or suggestion” Such as brainstorming threads, or discussing a bug.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

As was mentioned earlier in this thread, we have stated that we are unable to provide a reply to all suggestions posted in the suggestion subforum.

We do, however, regularly read the suggestions forum and deliver feedback to the design team on a daily basis. Just because you haven’t seen a reply does not mean it’s not being read.

Could we get a “dev +1” so we know a dev has checked the topic and we can feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

demonbooker.2749:

marnick.4305:

Enikuo.9205:

Threads that do not offer specific suggestions where a response might be expected (community brainstorming and a bug):

1. You are now ArenaNet’s lead designer
2. The top 10 things GW2 needs to improve
3. The Great Dream Patch: Add Your Own!
4. Show Profession Trainers on Hoelbrak map?

That’s just entitled. You don’t have any right to expect or demand that.

I don’t think that was meant as a statement of expectation, I think it was meant as “Threads that may not get a response because they lack a discrete request or suggestion” Such as brainstorming threads, or discussing a bug.

That’s correct. I’ve rephrased it to clarify:
Threads that do not offer a single, specific suggestion to which Anet could reasonably respond (community brainstorming and a bug):

Also, I did not express any expectation that all or even most threads should receive a response, as implied earlier in the thread. In fact, the data is specifically about the 33 highest traffic threads in the Suggestions forum that offer single suggestions – 33 is considerably less than “all.”

(37 – 4 threads that do not offer a single, specific suggestion = 33 threads, in case that confuses anyone)

lLobo.7960:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

As was mentioned earlier in this thread, we have stated that we are unable to provide a reply to all suggestions posted in the suggestion subforum.

We do, however, regularly read the suggestions forum and deliver feedback to the design team on a daily basis. Just because you haven’t seen a reply does not mean it’s not being read.

Could we get a “dev +1” so we know a dev has checked the topic and we can feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

And then there is a kittenstorm when the suggestion “players rezzed by max number of rezzers explode into a pile of kittens then reform” gets a dev+1 and isn’t promptly made into (in-game) reality.

Rajani Isa.6294:

lLobo.7960:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

As was mentioned earlier in this thread, we have stated that we are unable to provide a reply to all suggestions posted in the suggestion subforum.

We do, however, regularly read the suggestions forum and deliver feedback to the design team on a daily basis. Just because you haven’t seen a reply does not mean it’s not being read.

Could we get a “dev +1” so we know a dev has checked the topic and we can feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

And then there is a kittenstorm when the suggestion “players rezzed by max number of rezzers explode into a pile of kittens then reform” gets a dev+1 and isn’t promptly made into (in-game) reality.

could also have a dev -1

randomfightfan.4091:

Rajani Isa.6294:

lLobo.7960:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

As was mentioned earlier in this thread, we have stated that we are unable to provide a reply to all suggestions posted in the suggestion subforum.

We do, however, regularly read the suggestions forum and deliver feedback to the design team on a daily basis. Just because you haven’t seen a reply does not mean it’s not being read.

Could we get a “dev +1” so we know a dev has checked the topic and we can feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

And then there is a kittenstorm when the suggestion “players rezzed by max number of rezzers explode into a pile of kittens then reform” gets a dev+1 and isn’t promptly made into (in-game) reality.

could also have a dev -1

Gonna need a sturdy button for that..

Mark Katzbach.9084:

We do, however, regularly read the suggestions forum and deliver feedback to the design team on a daily basis. Just because you haven’t seen a reply does not mean it’s not being read.

panoptism at its best ^^ I wonder why game forums don’t have the following feature: “Dev views” next to normal views. Would be a cruel SLA addition to Community managers haha.

Kajin.5301:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

We do, however, regularly read the suggestions forum and deliver feedback to the design team on a daily basis. Just because you haven’t seen a reply does not mean it’s not being read.

panoptism at its best ^^ I wonder why game forums don’t have the following feature: “Dev views” next to normal views. Would be a cruel SLA addition to Community managers haha.

Devs probably don’t read the forums directly all that often. Instead they have people who scan the forums for things the devs need to know, in their opinion, which they write up and bring to the devs attention, in the same way that publishing house acquisition editors have first readers.

You don’t want your main editor wasting time reading through the entire slush pile when 90% of it isn’t worth even looking at. You instead pay someone at a lower pay scale to go through it, and pass on what they think the editor wants to see.

So the dev viewer idea isn’t likely to get much use. lol

Mark Katzbach.9084:

As was mentioned earlier in this thread, we have stated that we are unable to provide a reply to all suggestions posted in the suggestion subforum.

We do, however, regularly read the suggestions forum and deliver feedback to the design team on a daily basis. Just because you haven’t seen a reply does not mean it’s not being read.

Yeah, we see how you read the suggestions forum. Instead of doing what’s proposed there, you do stupid changes. Like the confusion or portal nerfs.

Uhh.

Those “stupid” changes were suggested on the suggestions forum before it happened. People have been asking for a WvW confusion nerf, and they asked for a portal nerf because porting 80 people from point A→B was too strong in wvw.

Thanks Mark for the reply however as an Engineer I’m sure someone at some time can get around to directly addressing our concerns.

We have 19 pages of bugs and broken items that one of your team members started just after launch that no one has addressed. they’ve further broken the class by making weird changes to the skills and traits that were some of the few things that were working properly and it’s been noted by the community that Devs tend to avoid the engineer forums like the plague.

As such you can personally see how we the concerned consumers of this product would like the community and patch managers to read and alleviate our fears concerning the future of the game.

I would like for these threads specifically to be taken seriously in the future.

1. You are now ArenaNet’s lead designer (242 replies, 6958 views)
2. The top 10 things GW2 needs to improve (175 replies, 4123 views)
3. The Great Dream Patch: Add Your Own! (67 replies, 9523 views)
4. Dungeon specific classes (4 replies, 375 views)
5. Are you missing playing with builds (14 replies, 632 views)

These are the things your players want from your game many of which are asking for a return to the pve balance you had at the beginning before you “balanced” PVP without separating PVP PVE and broke many a PVE build or damage ratio on the less played classes as well as a return to the open world focus of DE’s and DE meta development exclusively above and beyond the dungeons temporary or permanent and beyond the living story as well as the restoration of loot to the open world so that we actually do have a choice of where to play instead of WvW or Dungeons. This is what attracted thousands of us to this title prelaunch. Equal combat and a the ability to choose how we play (ie never having to step into a dungeon for anything ever again as so many mmo’s force us to do these days.) The complete restoration of Boss loot to the open world.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

As was mentioned earlier in this thread, we have stated that we are unable to provide a reply to all suggestions posted in the suggestion subforum.

We do, however, regularly read the suggestions forum and deliver feedback to the design team on a daily basis. Just because you haven’t seen a reply does not mean it’s not being read.

this is exactly the wrong response.

but at least you said something.

They don’t have to necessary care about what players want, they’ll do what’s the most profitable for them.

Like… adding new Gem Store Items. Horray! Rejoice!

Nick.6972:

They don’t have to necessary care about what players what, they’ll do what’s the most profitable for them.

Like… adding new Gem Store Items. Horray! Rejoice!

I can’t complain- I finally got a quiver I like for my ranger. And if they would add combat wearable glasses to the gem store, I’d buy those in a heartbeat.