Guild Wars 2

The developers have many times said that they look for feedback on forums.

My question is, where do they do this? Do they look through all the categories on these forums or do they collect the majority of their feedback on the “Suggestions” category?
On which other websites do they search?

If you don’t know the answer or don’t even have a good theory to share, don’t post a reply. I created a similar thread a month ago, but it was close because topics like this apparently often attracts a lot of flaming if one is not careful.

Thanks in advance!

Don’t think they care, honestly.

According to the devs, and other personnel, feedback is collected from all the threads (as evidenced by their responses in many threads), as well as other fan sites, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and other social media venues.

Reading through the ‘Dev posts’ thread might answer some of your questions. =)

I’d imagine they skim through various sections of the forums looking to see what people are saying pretty often. They arent going to stop and say hi though. The moderators might even forward some interesting stuff onto them as well.

Gasoline.2570:

Don’t think they care, honestly.

Is that really an honest answer?

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

According to the devs, and other personnel, feedback is collected from all the threads (as evidenced by their responses in many threads), as well as other fan sites, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and other social media venues.

Reading through the ‘Dev posts’ thread might answer some of your questions. =)

I might do that. Thanks.

to the OP: Bank accounts

That entirely depends on what you want to give feedback on.

For suggestions they read the following but rarely reply. Just because they don’t reply do not mean they don’t read it. I am sure they have their own Internal System for tracking suggestions.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions

If you think it is a bug you can post in the bug section:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs

Also each type of content has it’s own discussion section to where you can discuss the content type.

TL;DR they read all the sections.

The best way to get noticed is posting your topic during the peak times when ArenaNet Devs are in the office (1100PST-1900PST is what I’ve noticed). If you post in an off time and the post doesn’t see many player responses, then it will likely fall down into other pages and get missed.

Also posting well thought out, structured feedback/questions/suggestions, is another way for them to notice. This takes more time to write, but it makes it easier to understand and read.

Feedback? Probably returns from what’s selling the best for gems at the moment. Other than that I wouldn’t think they read much of it by the actions they have taken.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

According to the devs, and other personnel, feedback is collected from all the threads

Except of course from the engineer and necro players, and the entire suggestions forum.

The only time they’ve posted in suggestions is to say they do read it, and yet not a single thing has ever been taken from it, and it seems to be where they send ideas they don’t want anyone to actually consider. Since ideas that mesh with the goals they already have are frequently allowed to stay wherever they are first posted.

Engineers and necros just got their first red post in almost six months, addressing a bug, one single bug each.

I’d guess that the main source of feedback for them is what are the players actually doing in the game, probably things like “ok, CoF P1 is being done a lot but other dungeons not nearly as much, how can we make them more attractive?” “sclerite RNG boxes are selling a LOT more than the skins we sold directly, so some people do want some of that” and thigns like that (all of those strictly made up, for all I know it might be the other way around). Also the tickets submitted give them a good idea of what are people having problems with.

Some of the devs read the forums, I’m sure, but thinking about how other MMO companies work, most likely there’s someone whose work is to read the forums (the mods, maybe), make a weekly or daily summary (people want this, other people don’t want that, this feature is requested, this other feature is also requested but lots of people are against, things like that) and pass it over to the devs.

Other sources, reddit (some of the staff are active there from time to time), MMO news websites and things like that.

here is a statement made by an Anet employee at the end of another thread about the community and feedback:
Okay everybody, this argument is getting a bit circular now. What’s important is the following.The forum population is not a majority, but does provide valuable feedback which we do take into account, along with feedback from other sources.The silent majority is not all in-favor or against. Their opinions vary as much as any group of people’s opinions tend to.They are players just like you. They voice their opinions by either playing or not playing.Others not on the forums show their opinions on their personal blogs, fansites, twitter and facebook.Everybody’s opinions are important and valuable.I hope this clears some things up. I’m going to close this thread now. Please continue to provide us with feedback to help us to continue improving Guild Wars 2.https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Forum-users-ARE-NOT-the-minority/first

anzenketh.3759:

TL;DR they read all the sections.

Plenty of evidence to the contrary. ~~ An Engineer.

OP I honestly would love to know as well. As far as FB is concerned there’s ways of blocking unwanted posts on their pages or preventing people from contacting them.

Twitter doesn’t have space large enough to properly formulate a complaint about something.

As far as Reddit is concerned that’s probably the best bet considering that’s what they’ve used in earnest pre and post launch and even with information prior to adding it to their wiki pages before we convinced them that posting in forums the patch notes per patch was more honest then posting in Reddit.

Gasoline.2570:

Don’t think they care, honestly.

Play enough mmos and you will realize this is true.

Conncept.7638:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

According to the devs, and other personnel, feedback is collected from all the threads

Except of course from the engineer and necro players, and the entire suggestions forum.

The only time they’ve posted in suggestions is to say they do read it, and yet not a single thing has ever been taken from it, and it seems to be where they send ideas they don’t want anyone to actually consider. Since ideas that mesh with the goals they already have are frequently allowed to stay wherever they are first posted.

Engineers and necros just got their first red post in almost six months, addressing a bug, one single bug each.

Same with rangers, elementalist and warriors. The point being almost every profession thread have post of players thinking that their issues should take precedent over others. The rangers had to deal with that kitten for months, you guys should have to as well, well not really but I am petty so yeah.

I think they get feedback from bathroom walls.

In any business that requires a lot of reading, you hire someone (or a small team) to spend every day wading through thousands of pages of material and then have that person produce a weekly or bi-weekly paper or research report with all of the most important developments: in this case, trends and feedback.

Without Anet revealing the exact process, this makes the most sense from an efficiency standpoint. It also insulates devs from the toxic nature of MMO forums, and thus the dreaded burnout of a “players vs. dev” mentality.

They won’t ever tell us the exact process either, because someone will abuse it to get their ideas to float to the top.

silvermember.8941:

Conncept.7638:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

According to the devs, and other personnel, feedback is collected from all the threads

Except of course from the engineer and necro players, and the entire suggestions forum.

The only time they’ve posted in suggestions is to say they do read it, and yet not a single thing has ever been taken from it, and it seems to be where they send ideas they don’t want anyone to actually consider. Since ideas that mesh with the goals they already have are frequently allowed to stay wherever they are first posted.

Engineers and necros just got their first red post in almost six months, addressing a bug, one single bug each.

Same with rangers, elementalist and warriors. The point being almost every profession thread have post of players thinking that their issues should take precedent over others. The rangers had to deal with that kitten for months, you guys should have to as well, well not really but I am petty so yeah.

Rangers started out as one of the best PvP classes and were nerfed shortly after release, and have since been buffed. Necros and engineers started as the two worst classes and have stayed that way, the engineer has even been nerfed, repeatedly. Don’t give me any bullcrap about taking turns.

locoman.1974:

…probably things like “ok, CoF P1 is being done a lot but other dungeons not nearly as much, how can we make them more attractive?”

Sorry, but you’ve got it backwards. It should read: " How can we make CoF P1 less attractive?" For GW2, it’s nerfs, not buffs.

I think they look at most/all the sections, but they can’t possibly see every topic and they choose for themselves what they’re going to actually implement. So there is no where you can put a suggestion and guarantee it will be seen and acted on.

For example a few months back there was a thread asking who actually did the dailies. It wasn’t in the Suggestions section, it wasn’t phrased as a suggestion and very few posts were directed at the devs. But it got hundreds of replies and the consensus was that very few people put effort into the dailies because they were repetitive, boring, didn’t suit a lot of playstyles and the reward wasn’t worth the effort.

A couple of weeks later dailies changed to the system we have now – a rotation of optional goals and laurels that can be used to buy various useful/interesting things.

It’s possible they were already planning that change, but it definitely looked a lot like Anet acting on customer feedback. There’s other examples too – the Lost Shores section was full of complaints about all the issues it caused and we were told they’d never do a 1-time event again, Halloween totally confused everyone and Wintersday came out with a clear time-table. Likewise a lot of people were very rushed and stressed trying to do it all and (aside from Lost Shores) all the updates since have been more spread out.

I can’t remember how many of those things were actually posted as suggestions, but I know they were widely talked about in other areas of the forum.

Conncept.7638:

silvermember.8941:

Conncept.7638:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

According to the devs, and other personnel, feedback is collected from all the threads

Except of course from the engineer and necro players, and the entire suggestions forum.

The only time they’ve posted in suggestions is to say they do read it, and yet not a single thing has ever been taken from it, and it seems to be where they send ideas they don’t want anyone to actually consider. Since ideas that mesh with the goals they already have are frequently allowed to stay wherever they are first posted.

Engineers and necros just got their first red post in almost six months, addressing a bug, one single bug each.

Same with rangers, elementalist and warriors. The point being almost every profession thread have post of players thinking that their issues should take precedent over others. The rangers had to deal with that kitten for months, you guys should have to as well, well not really but I am petty so yeah.

Rangers started out as one of the best PvP classes and were nerfed shortly after release, and have since been buffed. Necros and engineers started as the two worst classes and have stayed that way, the engineer has even been nerfed, repeatedly. Don’t give me any bullcrap about taking turns.

Add to that the insult of the elites being modified for warriors to be better and more dev responses in the warriors forums then in every other post and you have a rightly mad bunch of PVE engineers on your hands. I just checked. Go look for yourself. There are far more posts in the warrior forums then in engineers or necros.

Also Rangers only got certain things buffed recently, they still have not fixed pets like every other mmo out there has had to fix pets across the board so they don’t die in 2 seconds.

zenleto.6179:

I’d imagine they skim through various sections of the forums looking to see what people are saying pretty often. They arent going to stop and say hi though. The moderators might even forward some interesting stuff onto them as well.

Gasoline.2570:

Don’t think they care, honestly.

Is that really an honest answer?

Well with the state of the game being what it is – yes, yes it is.

Gasoline.2570:

zenleto.6179:

I’d imagine they skim through various sections of the forums looking to see what people are saying pretty often. They arent going to stop and say hi though. The moderators might even forward some interesting stuff onto them as well.

Gasoline.2570:

Don’t think they care, honestly.

Is that really an honest answer?

Well with the state of the game being what it is – yes, yes it is.

Huh. Well, I suppose it takes all types.