Guild Wars 2

in all seriousness. the ranting is getting to the point of looking like certain other MMO forums…

Around release and short after I recall this game having a different playerbase that was less whiny and had lots of solid theorycrafting and well thought out posts that contributed solid information and feedback… when did this change?

the pure sense of entitlement and ridiculous replies..that when questioned now just get hammered with “white knighting moar!”

I haven’t seen many posts with numbers factually disputing almost any elite spec..tempest included.. it’s mostly just loud whining because “this isn’t what I WANT”

they’ve already put the work, the time, the days/nights effort in to produce an expansion pack to keep this game going.. which is what we ALL WANT yes? nobody here wants to leave for another game.. and threatening to on a forum isn’t really going to fix anything.

lets take BWE #2 and actually produce some hard numbers on all the available content\elite specs.. try to break the game as it were..so they get good feedback and can make proper adjusments so we all CAN have the game we want to enjoy

Don’t be too worried about it. The forum warriors aren’t representative of most of the playerbase.

In game, there is quite a lot less QQ and more enjoyment.

to be honest. The whining has always existed.
The main difference is that the non-whiners left.
Not the game, but the forums.
There are three kind of people (well there are a lot more, but for the purpose of this post -lol- ). Those who like the game. Those that don’t like the game and don’t care and those that don’t like the game, but do care.

The first is happily playing the game
The second is not playing the game, but also they don’t care bout that.
the third is frustrate and seek ways to express their unhappyness (as said, they do care bout the game).
Where is the best place to express it? here!

It is not allowed to discuss moderator actions, so I’m on thin ice, but I try to keep it as general as possible.

I think feedback is welcome and good. It helps the game to become better. However, there are people who are in my humble opinion, misusing this feedback to express just negative emotions that have no function but sattisfying themselfs. I’ve seen occasions where this leads to conflicts and where the mod-team is in my opinion to protective towards the right to give feedback and (still in my opnion) should have been more protective for the atmosphere on this forum.
Keep mind, it is bout balance here. Both are tasks the mod-team have and it is my opinion they have reacted too much out of balance. This has imo also to do with the framwork in which they operate. The forum code has for example a rule “Avoid frivolous and duplicate postings.”
Cause 99.99% of all opinions have been expressed, this gives the mods the right to remove a post that is just “ranting” (as you put it). they never do that however. They do merge simular threads, but never posts. Those kind of lil things would imo help a lot in governing this community in a more pleassant way. To restore balance between welcome feedback and unneeded ranting

It’s not just this forum with a lot of complainers. I used to read and post in gw2guru and after launch was shocked by how fast it went from mostly positive to mostly negative. I stopped posting and reading that forum and switched to this one for that reason. The moderation being “harsher” in this forum keeps the forum overall more positive as the rant posts and the ones that slide into name calling are removed faster.

MattyP.6954:

Don’t be too worried about it. The forum warriors aren’t representative of most of the playerbase.

In game, there is quite a lot less QQ and more enjoyment.

Yeah well a big part of the problem is the lack of things to do in-game. Personally I do my daily achievements, crafting, and a Tequatl and then log off (although I’ve taken up GW1 for HoM points… so I’m not going too far away from GW2).

Those that don’t complain leave it’s no biggy it’s just a game after all.

Those that complain like the other MMO you mentioned are those that don’t leave and take things more serious they will whine and complain about everything under the sun but they will never leave.

Those that are perfectly happy don’t typically respond to anything and if something does irk them they’ll fall into one of the two categories above of those that leave and those the reamin to QQ.

That said when the QQ gets too high with any MMO then the population is off balance and those old positive deals simply left. They always come back for an expansion though as is tradition.

In GW2 however especially HoT we saw what most people considered playable footage months ago and many people returned. Problem is those people returned to nothing and the fact there not even beta testing all the classes at once makes some people wonder if the game isn’t in alpha. We’ve seen druid and eng for instance months ago and yet they haven’t been present for Beta weekends 1 or upcoming 2. Weekly reveals doesn’t make sense to leave classes out of beta weekends and thus the reason beta weekend 2 only had half the classes and beta weekend 2 is missing two of the classes is because the classes are not complete and unable to be released. Thus if core classes are still messed up then the game is no where near release either. So people who were positive and did come back for HoT after seeing footage have once again left probably not to return since they already gave the game a second try.

So we have nothing but negativity left that most people can relate too.

I recently came back to the forums, after being off for quite a long time since there wasn’t much i wanted to discuss before the expansion was announced. I find the negativity disgusting. This forum used to be a place of good feedback and healthy discussion. Now it’s just a shoutfest in most topics.

This forum is the exact opposite of the game community right now, and it makes me think that allot of people on this forum aren’t playing the game atm, they are just waiting and hoping HoT will somehow make them like this game again, while in reality, they should have left and not looked back.

The Forum is like that for a long because it’s the internet. Didn’t get used to it yest

Sometime it rub me the wrong way, other time it’s funny. In the end, after a while you start to know who are trolls and who are nice people to talk to.

Not to be rude but a lot of people need prozac and to go outside.

It a side effect of utter boredom. And yes, most of the people ranting and raving about the game aren’t playing it as much as they used to . . . if at all.

Again . . . boredom.

• The forums exist to provide a venue for account owners to talk, complain, discuss, etc.
• Feedback expressed with a modicum of decorum is welcomed by ANet.
• Posters telling ANet what they want and like is feedback. It could even be valuable feedback.
• The use of loaded pejoratives like “ranting” and “whining” are as reprehensible from those who praise the game as from those who complain about it. If a point cannot be made without using such belittling tactics, then those are the posts that should not be made.
• The inclusion of a call to crunch numbers and report them is the only saving grace in the OP, but much of the rest of it is worse than the posts being complained about. A post asking for tighter, more incisive and focused feedback would be a contribution, but ranting about ranting is still ranting.

I just switched to primarily reading Reddit. I remember someone once stated that people post there to discuss the game and post here to get attention. I don’t completely agree with it but at times…

Halan.7931:

It’s sickening to read for 1000th time “I don’t like specialization name or something, that’s why I’m not buying”. Don’t like – don’t buy, but stop spewing negativity. They won’t change everything to YOUR liking…

Isn’t the standard procedure to just shame them for being silly? Although I guess that would add to the toxicity… never mind.

Halan.7931:

I think with HoT release only people who have the expansion should be able to write at forum.

It’s sickening to read for 1000th time “I don’t like specialization name or something, that’s why I’m not buying”. Don’t like – don’t buy, but stop spewing negativity. They won’t change everything to YOUR liking…

And it’s equally sickening to read for the 10000000000th time “Stop complaining on the forums, it’s making me sad!”

Substance E.4852:

Halan.7931:

I think with HoT release only people who have the expansion should be able to write at forum.

It’s sickening to read for 1000th time “I don’t like specialization name or something, that’s why I’m not buying”. Don’t like – don’t buy, but stop spewing negativity. They won’t change everything to YOUR liking…

And it’s equally sickening to read for the 10000000000th time “Stop complaining on the forums, it’s making me sad!”

Complaining isn’t the problem, feedback is needed. However toxic behaviour, absolute disrespect for other people, aggresive attacks pointed not only at the company but at certain developpers, and threathening to leave if one issue isn’t fixed, that is a problem. Imo any topic not made in a civil manner should be removed. People need to learn to behave, and realise that just because the devs are asking for feedback, you don’t get a free pass to neglect all manner of civil conversation.

Some people seem to have forgotten what that means and it’s these people that need to either help and make the game better, by being constructive and explaining themselves, or get the kitten out of our community and never come back.

“Arenanet you suck, are you kidding, this needs a complete overhaul. Omg i will leave the game if this stays.” and “gg game is dead for sure now” are not positive feedback. If you reply to topic like this i honestly hope you leave and never come back. In fact i hope you sort your life out, because if you are that angry about a video game you clearly need to set your priority’s straight.

If there is one thing that Arenanet does need to do it’s set these forums straight because allot of good feedback is being lost because the forums are this toxic, allot of people i know, and i’ve played with in the beta test, don’t even come on here because of the extremely negative atmosphere. And that is a problem, because the opinion of those people is important.

munki.6402:

Fox.3469:

This forum is the exact opposite of the game community right now, and it makes me think that allot of people on this forum aren’t playing the game atm, they are just waiting and hoping HoT will somehow make them like this game again, while in reality, they should have left and not looked back.

+1
Absolutely this. As I mentioned in my post above, I have come to recognize names here and I ignore their posts because it is painfully obvious they are here to pick fights and rage at people. They’ll use the argument that a subject is valid because there are so many responses to a particular thread, but in reality it’s their posts/responses/replies (containing every reply since the beginning of the argument) that account for a significant number of those pages. It’s blatant trolling and in some cases bullying and it’s ugly. Boredom is no excuse for acting like a total kitten on a daily basis.

It would be very nice to see more constructive dialogue. It’s here, but one has to look for it. Pretty pathetic.

Agreed, but that’s nature of the beast and all. But to be fair, when the expansion comes out, the complaining will ebb given most will be playing . . . unless the expansion is an utter disaster.

Then all bets are off.

Players are passionate about their games, I don’t agree with all the rants that happen but it shows that the community cares.

Every MMO forums of every popular game that’s not moderated to death is pretty much like this one. That’s because no one can make a game that can please everyone. People want the game to be their ideal game, after all we spend a lot of time playing our MMOs of choice, and so people are dissatisfied.

It’s not like a driving game, where you get the game and that’s pretty much it. You have a chance to change it post launch. And since most people believe their views are widely shared by some kind of majority, it invites them to weigh in.

All games need feedback and that’s what forums are for. That said, plenty of people who are frustrated can’t see how their frustration reads to others who aren’t frustrated. It ends up looking more like an attack than feedback. It’s not because these are bad people…they’re simply frustrated people. They have a right to share their feelings as long as they stay within the guidelines set out by Anet.

And I have the same right to respond to them. Something to do on long load screens. lol

I’ll try it again with an example to point out the grey area between ranting and feedback.
As you can see my posts end with a line from the internationale (socialist and communist song), but twisted to the GW2 universe. This is cause I have the opinion and feedback that Arenanet has been nerfing certain farms too heavy just cause it harmed the powertraders. Some nerfs where needed (like the ones that caused drama cause you needed to let an event fail on purpose), but some where perfeclty legit ways of farming and where not harmfull to anything but the price of certain items on the market.
Since then, they have not done those kind of nerfs again, so I’m somewhati hopefull that they have listened.

Sorry for a long intro, but wanted to use some feedback on my own as an example.
I have given this type of feedback on several ocassions where it was appropiate (and on topic). However, I’m not dragging it out whenever I can.

I see people doing exact that. They go wildly off topic just to make their point for the millionth time.

Feedback is always welcome!
Feedback from the heart is always welcome too. We all understand that if something frustrates you, it helps to bring it to the attention of the devs, not only for the devs, but also to ease your frustration.
Venting just your frustration without any underlaying feedback (new and on topic), is just for venting your frustration.
The last one is where for me the line is. I understand some frustration (I don’t always agree with it though), but this forum is not for counceling.

That kind of venting is something that is given way too much room on this forum.

Just to address a few of the things being said here.

One of the things being mentioned here is that conversations keep going into circles. This might be true while not completely. Yes many conversation do go in circles however usually every circle also something new gets added.

Also it’s really the nature of how forums work. Let’s take as example the CDI about guild-halls. At the beginning the discussion was about the possibility for open world guild-halls (and housing). Some people said it would not be possible in the current system, you could not place buildings in the world, based on that some options where discussed how it would be possible, like new maps or guild-ships (while more like the wizard’s tower). The discussion moved on everybody holding his own idea as base, somewhere more talking about open world, some about instance guild-halls. Then a few pages later, a new persons enters the conversation and notice somebody is talking about open world-housing, and start telling this is impossible, so you explain him it would be based on the options talked about before.. This comes to an end and the conversation continues, until the next person enters the conversation and the same happens and so on. Just as threads like this one keep popping up and both sides say the same as they did in the previous threads.

Another thing mentioned here is that the ‘whiners’ are just a small group and don’t represent the majority of the people who play.. That might be true, but they might in fact represent a big group of the players that did play the game in the past and left. That group is likely coming back with HoT and assuming Anet would want to hold them this time you might want to know what reasons those people had to leave.

Lastly I would like to add that somebody does not have to be a whiner just because he is negative. Personally I mainly complain about 1 issue (reward system, and the reason behind it) because I think it’s the biggest problem GW2 has. Simply defining people QQing because they disagree or dislike something and talk about it is worse than the whining itself, because really all you do is trying to dismiss something without a good reasoning behind it. Same btw for naming somebody a White Night, that is basically the same but from the other side.

I would not consider anybody a whiner unless he seems to be complaining about everything and you can find him in completely random thread complaining about all those different things. And a white night would be somebody you could find all over the place defending everything.

A dev/mod dedicated to each class, talking and taking feedback in each specific forum would greatly help. Otherwise it goes out of control and emotionally negative loosing a lot of good feedback and ideas withing pages of garbage.

My biggest gripe is that people often misunderstand that whining is not feedback. It’s just that, whining.

When someone says something is stupid, terrible and he does not like it that’s not a lot to go at from dev POV because that’s just the result of something and devs want to hear about the cause.

So if people whine that X is stupid do tell why exactly you (general “you”) think so.

Another thing is that people often think that their opinion equals fact or speak for many like “we think it is terrible!” instead of “I think it is terrible” or “no one likes it”, “everyone hates it” etc.