(edited by KarlaGrey.5903)
The Raison D'être of the PvP forums...
Posted by Arganthium
Allie Murdock.8152:
Countless,
Yes, I did say that. I also said in that post that we are investigating ways that we can get proper metrics to reflect the majority of the playerbase. If you knew the amount of players that actually played PvP in our game, then you would understand why a strawpoll with 300 votes is not sufficient.
That’s not to say that we don’t talk about it internally. We talk about it quite a lot.
If the issue was as simple as me making a strawpoll, I’d do it; but it’s not. A very, very small percentage of our playerbase even visit these forums, let alone vote on a poll.
__
Well, you’d figure there might be a problem when your entire SoloQ team (yourself included) agrees to go AFK during a match on Skyhammer.
The problem, Allie, is that your comment is completely empty; there have, to my knowledge, never been any statistics taken by asking the player base questions in-game, as you seem to imply. Furthermore, such an action seems unlikely to ever occur, and with good reason, due to the difficulty of being able to take these statistics. As a result, you have to rely upon some other source to tell you that Skyhammer is bad. This community has been screaming these reasons out to ANet, and yet we obviously continue to be ignored, as our reasoning receives no response from ANet and Skyhammer is still part of SoloQ.
Also, let me add that if after a year and a half of this game’s release ANet still can’t find “ways that we can get proper metrics to reflect the majority of the player base”, and that’s what ANet is balancing based upon, then it’s highly unlikely this game will ever be balanced. This statement also doesn’t make sense in the context of something Justin said…
__
Justin ODell.9517:
Chaith.8256 is right though, a lot of those changes were in response to what the playerbase wanted at the time.
__
I do have reason to believe that the straw poll is faulty, but the methods that ANet has been using are just as lackluster.
EDIT: my last comment was said due to sampling bias and a lack of random spreading. Silvermember was spot on with his analogy with the Fortune magazine.
Posted by KarlaGrey
Allie Murdock.8152:
Countless,
Yes, I did say that. I also said in that post that we are investigating ways that we can get proper metrics to reflect the majority of the playerbase. If you knew the amount of players that actually played PvP in our game, then you would understand why a strawpoll with 300 votes is not sufficient.
That’s not to say that we don’t talk about it internally. We talk about it quite a lot.
If the issue was as simple as me making a strawpoll, I’d do it; but it’s not. A very, very small percentage of our playerbase even visit these forums, let alone vote on a poll.
__
Fair enough, numbers of forum go’ers are likely low, but why should forum dicussions be held at all then? What’s the point of CDIs and similar official threads, if participant numbers are too low to be taken into account? Eep!
Isn’t it so that forum numbers are actually considered only when it’s convinient to Anet (i.e. when it supports your argument/s), and dismissed when they’d work against them.
And that goes for both pve and pvp.
Besides, the people that decide to be active on the forums likely (still) care about the game (minor exceptions aside), unlike those who do not go out of their way to put in the extra effort – pretty much like voting on an election. But apparently such players as well as their feedback hold zero added value in Anet eyes.
I’m honestly baffled how there are STILL players who attempt to provide feedback and try to make this pvp ‘grow’, when they clearly do not ‘reflect the majority’ of the pvp player base.
P.S. I’d keep hotjoin and WvW figures out of the equation for accuracy.
(edited by KarlaGrey.5903)
And the final, and arguably the best post from the mentioned thread:
Posted by Whit
Allie Murdock.8152:
-snip-
A very, very small percentage of our playerbase even visit these forums, let alone vote on a poll.
__
If a “very, very small percentage” of the community visits these forums, then I just have to ask…
1) You are the community coordinator for spvp.
2) A “very, very small percentage” of players “even visit these forums”
3) You were sub-rank 20 for at least a year (?) of being Community Coordinator (for spvp).
So my question is – how exactly do you coordinate with the spvp community? It’s not in-game (they honestly should give you time at work to log in and run spvp imo… only way to get in touch with the community). Any coordination with these forums is moot because we’re such a small sub category of a sub category (“very, very small percentage”), so anything done here seems rather unproductive. Hence, my question…
To extrapolate on this idea of “a very, very small percentage of [players] even visit[s] these forums” – what useful data can you even collect here. The argument being used is essentially, well, so few people use this tool that anything gleaned from it is automatically invalid, as it only, at best, represents a minority. So… why bother with it at all if you seek only majority opinion? It clearly is not useful for market research or gathering good feedback (as the percentage that use it is too small to be considered important).
__
P.S. This forums’ method of putting things in italics is killing me.
Edit: Phaeton, I no longer play the game (as clearly hinted at in my very first paragraph), but I when I still did I too tried providing feedback on several occasions.
Moreover, being a regular player is not a requirement one needs to fullfill in order to question the existence of these forums.
(edited by KarlaGrey.5903)
..Yeah but I swear you quit a year ago.
Just trying to understand the motivation behind dragging these forums through the muck since then…
Clearly the forums are useful to you, otherwise you wouldn’t still be here..
Phaatonn, London UK
You should read my first paragraph again.
That said, it is all part of a grand scheme to convert the remainder of the die-hard GW2 believers and have them join ‘the dark side’.
Really.
Anyhow, the ball is mostly on Anet’s side now. Will there be re-assurance, silence, or the usual censorship?
Stay tuned!
(edited by KarlaGrey.5903)
Well if that’s your bag.
I’m off to work
Phaatonn, London UK
(edited by Moderator)
For me (a random gw player) PvP forums are very useful and I am glad they exist. It’s an easy way of getting my ideas and opinions across and also something to do between arena queues. And devs actually do read all/most of it.
I also increased my forum skill level, I almost never get infracted anymore!
Good french skills.
/karla
Several GW1 goldcapes ~
Question for Allie
Q: if the population here is so unrepresentive why is anet wasting their time doing CDIS?
Are they a lie to keep us happy talking about ladders, balance and stuff?
However, if CDI does work, could you make a new one about the possible removal of skyhammer?
I believe CDI should focus on fixing gamebreaking issues that we currently have rather than talking about seasons that who knows when are coming.
Many players like me are waiting for this map to be removed in order to come back to the game. Skyhammer makes soloq a really bad experience.
Its unfair to many classes, random, you can be pulled to death by an invisible player, you can be oneshotted by an unavoidable cannon, etc. This map should never be in a ranked queue.
(edited by Marcos.3690)
Of course these forums are not representative of the player base. To see what the player base realy wants make the “votes” in-game after a pvp match. All PvP players would vote if they want but only once for each map. Something like in betas where after one match you could choose if the event was fun or not.
-Do you enjoyed the map? If not give sugestions to improve the map.
-Do you like the rewards? If not give sugestions to improve the rewards.
-Other sugestions.
Good french skills.
/karla
Merci beaucoup, dear Zhu. :*
I think my thread is already starting to bear fruit, we’re still pending an official response though.
I’ll prolly get infracted and banned in the process, but it’ll be worth it!
Whit killed the devs
Yea, I doubt they will ever fully recover from that hit, if at all. Ownage skillz over 9000, oi.
(edited by KarlaGrey.5903)
Whit will soon be contacted by A-net to be hired and join Grouch on their ranks, just wait and see!
CDI’s are much different than a poll. A poll like the one that was created for skyhammer is too much of an extreme imo. That’s like putting up a poll for the deletion of sPvP or WvW right now and having people vote on it on these forums and I can almost guarantee you most people will vote for deletion because they are unhappy with it AND that most of the people who come and post on these forums are people who have issues with the game and not the ones who like it. Now should they delete sPvP or WvW since the poll said so? Probably not, it wouldn’t be a good decision for the game.
Now from what I understand from CDI’s, yes the devs pick the topics (excluding the ranger one), but the CDI’s are there to spark up discussion and ideas on a selective topic which most topics are very broad. These topics help the devs see what the forum community thinks should he improved and also what they may be missing. It gives the devs ideas that maybe they didn’t have, or something that they came up with and want a different view from but most importantly puts all these ideas on a particular subject into one thread with summaries.
Now I’m not saying that a poll is trash compared to a CDI, not even close. But a poll is much more rash than a CDI and I’m sure Anet reads everything on these forums. Ideas from CDI’s have made it into the game and I’m sure they will continue to but not all of them make it, not even close, in fact its takes a long time for any of these ideas to be put in and I’m sure your threads on skyhanmer have an influence on their opinion on skyhammer. Anet definitely cherry picks ideas from these discussions because it is such a small percentage and it is their game. If we made all the decisions it wouldn’t be Anet’s game. And I’m just saying, but you all are the ones who expected Anet to delete content out of the game because of a 300 straw poll vote. That’s a much bigger decision.
Just my 2cents……cant seem to ever shorten my posts, oh well
Edit: I want to say that I don’t believe the devs are never wrong, there are a lot of things I disagree with such as how they do balance in the game regarding frequency of patches and so on, my point is the focal of this thread which is that the community’s opinion doesn’t do anything and the CDI’s are there to make us feel better
(edited by Cush.4063)
Do you even play guild wars 2?
The OP is one of those people that can’t seem to move on and the forum is the only place where for a brief moment in time the OP can be relevant. It reminds me of tales of former H.S star Quarterbacks from small football towns across America that did not amount to much after leaving H.S; so every year, the quarterback don’s on his old letter jack and walks around his old alma mater trying to relive that brief moment when he was the town’s star.
In this case, the OP and others similar to him/her, sticking around and stating the obvious is important to him/her. On this forums, the OP and others are like stars and apparently spending 60 bucks on a game is totally worth spending a year when OP apparently left in a trail of glory mocking the game, instead of moving on.
This is an mmo forum, if someone isn’t whining chances are the game is dead.
So all I got out of that is that Anet doesn’t like forum strawpolls. Suddenly that means that the forums are completely worthless, am I missing something?
A few quick points. I personally know about 10 other players that don’t post here that basically hold about 90% of the same views about pvp in GW2 as I do. I am sure there are many other people like that post here some that know more then 10 people. To act like this board is not in general an excellent indication of what the player base wants is ludicrous. Also, I personally believe that a straw poll of about 300-500 people would be very accurate. This game would be lucky to have 5k -10K players playing pvp for at least an hour a week. They would never tell us that data but I would love to see how many players play at least an hour a week. IT IS NOT MANY for a game with over a million players logging in regularly. So 300-500 is actually quite a lot given the small pvp player base. Those comments by Allie have basically destroyed any faith I had left in this game. What do you expect from somebody that has a rank 20 pvp charcter after a year and a half. For pete’s sake they have added accelerated rank point weekends so many times that literally like 20 hours of pvp and possibly less.
(edited by brannigan.9831)
A few quick points. I personally know about 10 other players that don’t post here that basically hold about 90% of the same views about pvp in GW2 as I do. I am sure there are many other people like that post here some that know more then 10 people. To act like this board is not in general an excellent indication of what the player base wants is ludicrous. Also, I personally believe that a straw poll of about 300-500 people would be very accurate. This game would be lucky to have 5k -10K players playing pvp for at least an hour a week. They would never tell us that data but I would love to see how many players play at least an hour a week. IT IS NOT MANY for a game with over a million players logging in regularly. So 300-500 is actually quite a lot given the small pvp player base. Those comments by Allie have basically destroyed any faith I had left in this game. What do you expect from somebody that has a rank 20 pvp charcter after a year and a half. For pete’s sake they have added accelerated rank point weekends so many times that literally like 20 hours of pvp and possibly less.
1. Anecdotal evidence is useless in science is useless in any form of debate and scientific explanations.
2. Having faith in a product? Just WOW.
This is an mmo forum, if someone isn’t whining chances are the game is dead.
Silvermember I have never really seen what your purpose in threads is besides to argue with people who hold a different opinion than you. Can you explain to me what it is?
[url=https://] [/url]
Silvermember I have never really seen what your purpose in threads is besides to argue with people who hold a different opinion than you. Can you explain to me what it is?
The most important thing to realize is, I only post on this forum when I m at work aka I have absolutely nothing to do.
Attacking someone’s opinion is the essence of an argument. Also you only see me attacking people’s opinion because that is what you look for. I just recently got a 2 day ban for essentially telling a dev that his excitement over the feature patch balance was no different than the developers of Aliens marine colonels being excited about their game. I also enjoy mocking the imaginary balance this game supposedly has, but I digress.
With that said, I am not a particular fan of the popular mentality that this forum has, the problem with populist mentality is they tend not be grounded in realism or disregard the consequences. I like to think of myself as a realist or maybe I am just a pessimist or a fanboy pretending to be a pessimistic pretending to be a realist. The point being I think a lot of points or opinions are made in a BS bubble that completely disregard reality, so I generally attempt to pick them apart. Obviously it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, I just do it.
This is an mmo forum, if someone isn’t whining chances are the game is dead.
(edited by silvermember.8941)
Ingame polls would have a rather significant sampling bias too: namely, still active players that haven’t quit (the game, or only sPvP) due to issues like e.g. Skyhammer in SoloQ.
It’s not the same at all as just polling strangers from the street.
In fact, in light of this, forum opinion might have much higher relevance than ANet gives it credit, since it also includes a sample of players who have quit/are very infrequent players but are still dedicated (in some way) to the game.
Silvermember I have never really seen what your purpose in threads is besides to argue with people who hold a different opinion than you. Can you explain to me what it is?
The most important thing to realize is, I only post on this forum when I m at work aka I have absolutely nothing to do.
Attacking someone’s opinion is the essence of an argument. Also you only see me attacking people’s opinion because that is what you look for. I just recently got a 2 day ban for essentially telling a dev that his excitement over the feature patch balance was no different than the developers of Aliens marine colonels being excited about their game. I also enjoy mocking the imaginary balance this game supposedly has, but I digress.
With that said, I am not a particular fan of the popular mentality that this forum has, the problem with populist mentality is they tend not be grounded in realism or disregard the consequences. I like to think of myself as a realist or maybe I am just a pessimist or a fanboy pretending to be a pessimistic pretending to be a realist. The point being I think a lot of points or opinions are made in a BS bubble that completely disregard reality, so I generally attempt to pick them apart. Obviously it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, I just do it.
Ah well I can understand that and i had 3 suspensions myself this past month so I know that feel bro
[url=https://] [/url]
Lol, you know there is nothing new here right? the idea of metrics governing choices for development is in every game development studio.
The forums are here so Anet can take the feedback that suits them best considering whatever the situation is with their development/resources/financial situation. These philosophical arguments of communication can go in circles forever, a conclusion or straight answer can never be delivered, cause guess what… you dont work at Anet do you?
I am not siding with Anet on this, since my Wildstar NDA is now dropped, I can attest to the fact that it is no different there and metrics>feedback, forum community is not large enough to be considered bla bla. Ive also been testing TESO for a year so I suppose same thing there? Balance changes go through which completely oppose all reason or forum comments, features which are staple to MMOs dont get made (hi guild tags?).
So what is my point? Well yea, sure, maybe you “owned” Anet with this most important epiphany, but the reality is none of this is nothing new, and since you will never get the reasoning for decisions made then no amount of thread baiting and forum warring will ever reach you to a conclusion. At least not on these forums, the devs are never going to communicate the answers you want since thats their jobs on the line.
GW1 Rank 1 – 2 Gold Capes – [sC] [sup]
hello
previously rank 2 on old leaderboards
EG.secret.OG.NAVI.sorrychief
You should read my first paragraph again.
That said, it is all part of a grand scheme to convert the remainder of the die-hard GW2 believers and have them join ‘the dark side’.
Really.Anyhow, the ball is mostly on Anet’s side now. Will there be re-assurance, silence, or the usual censorship?
Stay tuned!
Silence and/or censorship seem to fit the bill. Silence would be the wisest move – and you only risk upsetting a minority or a minority. Also, thanks for the compliments
If the forums are a vocal minority… Wouldn’t listening be progressive? People post ideas and ideals usually out of displeasure or passion, and that creates debate. If the logically sound arguments are validated, followed up on, then implemented, wouldn’t the majority then flock to the forums as well in the case of displeasure?
and this may be a fallacy, but wouldn’t the vocal minority be adequate representatives for the majority (who either don’t care, or feel their efforts would be in vain, ect.) as long as something is progressive?
“Maybe I was the illusion all along!”
Do you even play guild wars 2?
The OP is one of those people that can’t seem to move on and the forum is the only place where for a brief moment in time the OP can be relevant. It reminds me of tales of former H.S star Quarterbacks from small football towns across America that did not amount to much after leaving H.S; so every year, the quarterback don’s on his old letter jack and walks around his old alma mater trying to relive that brief moment when he was the town’s star.
In this case, the OP and others similar to him/her, sticking around and stating the obvious is important to him/her. On this forums, the OP and others are like stars and apparently spending 60 bucks on a game is totally worth spending a year when OP apparently left in a trail of glory mocking the game, instead of moving on.
OHI how are those strawmen treating ya?
Stop being so desperate to get your share of ‘glory’.
Silvermember I have never really seen what your purpose in threads is besides to argue with people who hold a different opinion than you. Can you explain to me what it is?
The most important thing to realize is, I only post on this forum when I m at work aka I have absolutely nothing to do.
Attacking someone’s opinion is the essence of an argument. Also you only see me attacking people’s opinion because that is what you look for. I just recently got a 2 day ban for essentially telling a dev that his excitement over the feature patch balance was no different than the developers of Aliens marine colonels being excited about their game. I also enjoy mocking the imaginary balance this game supposedly has, but I digress.
With that said, I am not a particular fan of the popular mentality that this forum has, the problem with populist mentality is they tend not be grounded in realism or disregard the consequences. I like to think of myself as a realist or maybe I am just a pessimist or a fanboy pretending to be a pessimistic pretending to be a realist. The point being I think a lot of points or opinions are made in a BS bubble that completely disregard reality, so I generally attempt to pick them apart. Obviously it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, I just do it.
The most important thing to realize is, many others do the same, myself included (I just had a 3 day ban over the last weekend which I wasn’t even aware of until I logged again during work to see the PM notice, so beat that ) – fanboying the devs doesn’t turn you into some beacon of light and truth, just as going against ‘populist mentality’ doesn’t suddenly mean you’re automatically right – especially not when all you have at your hand are mere personal attacks.
Where exactly did I disregard reality btw? Official posts aren’t fanfiction last time I checked, and when a representative of the company clearly states ‘A very, very small percentage of our playerbase even visit these forums, let alone vote on a poll.’, that statement is more than enough to work with.
Funny how you consider yourself a realist, because in comparison to me, you’d easily be called an idealist. But hey, it’s easy to pick you apart either way.
Now do stop trying to derail the thread, thank you.
At Jackie, of course such things are nothing new, but apparently many players either aren’t quite aware of that, or (still) fall for all the lip service, so perhaps throwing raw facts at them black on white will finally help them wake up. Perhaps at the end of the day, it’ll even make Anet step up their game, so it’s a win-win situation either way.
Silence and/or censorship seem to fit the bill. Silence would be the wisest move – and you only risk upsetting a minority or a minority. Also, thanks for the compliments
Yea, that’d indeed be the wisest thing to do! The perfect plan would be to keep silent and simply prove me wrong when an occasion for it appears.
Thumbs up again for that epic post, it’s pure win in so many ways…
(edited by KarlaGrey.5903)
Opinions of any demographic are worthless without verifiable truth.
Skyhammer is fair in the sense that it offers equal opportunity through symmetrical design, but it also promotes control abilities to the point of narrowing effective build diversity and devaluing combat through cheap mechanics.
Still it’s balanced and there are probably people who enjoy the playstyle, so I think it should stay, however, there are obviously many people who don’t enjoy it, so I think the best solution is to allow options to check (enable/disable) maps so everyone is happy.
and snares my capability, in fairness of vantage…
Discuss: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/PvP-Down-state-Evaluation/first
(edited by Erebos.6741)
Do you even play GW2 OP?
Grouch cared about the game, talked to the community (in game and out) regularly, and responded to them promoting and instigating constructive discussion. He took their opinions and I’m fairly sure he brought them to the attention of the sPvP team(s).
Allie reads forums, which contains 99.99% of nonconstructive whining while hardly (if even) communicating to players with legitimate feedback. She doesn’t take the initiative to talk to players in game either, and will only sPvP if asked to.
To conclude, she mainly listens to the whiners on forums who have no idea how the game actually works; ie the “very, very small percentage” of the community. So not only does she listen to such a small part of the community, it’s the part of the community that doesn’t know how to separate personal bias from their opinion in order for the good of the game. Taking the easy path saying you’re doing your job by reading forums, after saying yourself that forums only accommodate a small percentage of the player-base, isn’t going to help the game progress and only aggravates the majority of the actual community.
The circle the OP has pointed out shows incompetence. Rather than actually doing her job she reads forums. Then when forums complain about something she says that the forums do not accurately represent the PvP population. But instead of going to the PvP population and gathering opinions of several players from all levels of skill she goes back to forums and repeats the cycle.
Ladies and gents, I think we have (another) winner~
This is why TL:DR was invented.
Grouch cared about the game, talked to the community (in game and out) regularly, and responded to them promoting and instigating constructive discussion. He took their opinions and I’m fairly sure he brought them to the attention of the sPvP team(s).
Allie reads forums, which contains 99.99% of nonconstructive whining while hardly (if even) communicating to players with legitimate feedback. She doesn’t take the initiative to talk to players in game either, and will only sPvP if asked to.
To conclude, she mainly listens to the whiners on forums who have no idea how the game actually works; ie the “very, very small percentage” of the community. So not only does she listen to such a small part of the community, it’s the part of the community that doesn’t know how to separate personal bias from their opinion in order for the good of the game. Taking the easy path saying you’re doing your job by reading forums, after saying yourself that forums only accommodate a small percentage of the player-base, isn’t going to help the game progress and only aggravates the majority of the actual community.
The circle the OP has pointed out shows incompetence. Rather than actually doing her job she reads forums. Then when forums complain about something she says that the forums do not accurately represent the PvP population. But instead of going to the PvP population and gathering opinions of several players from all levels of skill she goes back to forums and repeats the cycle.
That incompetence is likely built into the job description and functions to be honest. Put this way, the title may be “community coordinator”, but the goals, actual job functions, and the way it is structured internally may simply be “forum mod manager”.
You and I can discuss (and have discussed) how useful this role really is, but it may be through no fault of the individual – more of how they have organized their corporate structure, and the euphemistic titles used. It’s like calling a shift supervisor at a hotel front desk the front desk manager instead.