Guild Wars 2

The issue of communication between ANet and WvW has come up quite a bit, most recently in this thread here which links to this article:

http://zerolives.com/article/mVN7bYGy/guild-wars-2-community-complaints-about-lack-of-developer-attention-to-world-versus-world-game-mode

Which made me wonder whether WvW has really received significantly more or less communication than usual this year (well, last year, 2016), and whether the sense of no communication is a self-delusion created by salty players, or whether its really true.

So in the name of science, linked is an analysis of all Red Posts on the forums:

http://i.imgur.com/hdF3lyp.jpg

Now, 3 caveats to note here:

• It is not possible to quantify the “quality” of a post, so this treats a 1-word reply as the same as a 1000-word essay.
• Not all Red Posts are “developer” posts, many will be from support staff.
• Some forums are now hidden, so not counted.

That said, there are some conclusions we could draw from this:

• WvW has received more communication in 2016 than it did in 2015.
• The proportion of attention that WvW receives as a whole of communication across all areas was significantly higher in 2016 than previous years.
• However, this is still significantly less than PvE (3x more) and PvP (2x more).
• The 2016 boost comes from a flurry of activity in Q2, the rest of the year is “as usual”.
• Looking at previous years, the difference between WvW and PvE/PvP communication was much larger than in 2016, which may explain why WvWers have a pre-conception that they are not communicated with.

But maybe the numbers are skewed by 1 or 2 monster threads with 100+ posts? Well, lets see….

http://i.imgur.com/1vjT4yU.jpg

This shows basically the same shape.

2016 is technically up on 2015, but notice how much the engagement with WvW nose-dived in 2015, and how 2016 was still nowhere near 2013/2014.

Maybe its one poster going crazy and skewing the numbers?

http://i.imgur.com/FhGwiJf.jpg

Nope. Infact, quite the opposite, it looks like WvW does very well in terms of the breadth of different red-users engaging.

So I think this shows what we all already knew; that while the engagement has been better in 2016 than 2015, that’s still not really saying very much given that the engagement through 2014/2015 was so low.

WvsW development staff = tsunshun’s

They hate you, they are lonely without you, and they always hate you when you are around.

ur posst is like complaining over the wintersday minigames. That’s all they think of when they see wvsw. A minigame. The fact the players were able to make it more than a minigame wasn’t something they did. And the solution to helping players maintain the mode as something more than a minigame, is not something they are willing to do.

Its like owning a grill store and providing 20 grills for people to use once a month as a barbeque event. Then attending one of the banquets and finding out they aren’t grilling meat, they are grilling vegetables.
Then them coming to you and asking that you send them the lower heat models used for nonmeat produce. ANd you saying to yourself "they were supposed to be grilling meat…..but they aren’t…..and i provided them this stuff to grill meat, and i promised to continue providing this stuff for future festivals……but I had intended them to grill meat. So now I have to provide them a different product to grill vegetables because I promised to provide the grills for “BARBEQUE” festivals!?!?!? That’s gonna cost me more resources! Those are more expensive and harder to deliver!"

It creates a “I don’t really have to do anyhting and its not in my best interest to do anyhting but its kinda justified that I do something but it also isn’t” moment.

take a moment to let that sink in…lol

Ragnar.4257:

The issue of communication between ANet and WvW has come up quite a bit, most recently in this thread here which links to this article:

http://zerolives.com/article/mVN7bYGy/guild-wars-2-community-complaints-about-lack-of-developer-attention-to-world-versus-world-game-mode

Which made me wonder whether WvW has really received significantly more or less communication than usual this year (well, last year, 2016), and whether the sense of no communication is a self-delusion created by salty players, or whether its really true.

So in the name of science, linked is an analysis of all Red Posts on the forums:

http://i.imgur.com/hdF3lyp.jpg

Now, 3 caveats to note here:

• It is not possible to quantify the “quality” of a post, so this treats a 1-word reply as the same as a 1000-word essay.
• Not all Red Posts are “developer” posts, many will be from support staff.
• Some forums are now hidden, so not counted.

That said, there are some conclusions we could draw from this:

• WvW has received more communication in 2016 than it did in 2015.
• The proportion of attention that WvW receives as a whole of communication across all areas was significantly higher in 2016 than previous years.
• However, this is still significantly less than PvE (3x more) and PvP (2x more).
• The 2016 boost comes from a flurry of activity in Q2, the rest of the year is “as usual”.
• Looking at previous years, the difference between WvW and PvE/PvP communication was much larger than in 2016, which may explain why WvWers have a pre-conception that they are not communicated with.

But maybe the numbers are skewed by 1 or 2 monster threads with 100+ posts? Well, lets see….

http://i.imgur.com/1vjT4yU.jpg

This shows basically the same shape.

2016 is technically up on 2015, but notice how much the engagement with WvW nose-dived in 2015, and how 2016 was still nowhere near 2013/2014.

Maybe its one poster going crazy and skewing the numbers?

http://i.imgur.com/FhGwiJf.jpg

Nope. Infact, quite the opposite, it looks like WvW does very well in terms of the breadth of different red-users engaging.

So I think this shows what we all already knew; that while the engagement has been better in 2016 than 2015, that’s still not really saying very much given that the engagement through 2014/2015 was so low.

This was a great post with excellent research. /much respect!

For startes they could fix the lag issues present in zerg vs zerg situations.

Great post.

/15 characters body length

Gaile says otherwise…

Most of the real responses were probably generated from the poll threads, and a few topics they brought up like new worlds and skirmish new siege etc. Not much in response to random hot topics, just on stuff they brought up. We’ve also had support post one line stuff like glicko boosting whatever server.

Notice how much the responses dropped off from when they had the april ama and wvw team revamped, also look at the number of responses in the class forums lol… lol

It’s 2017,
Can we grow up and find a new word instead of salty?

Justine.6351:

It’s 2017,
Can we grow up and find a new word instead of salty?

Does Briny work?

Justine.6351:

It’s 2017,
Can we grow up and find a new word instead of salty?

This word kinda confuses me as well as I used it in jr high back in 1995 quite often when schooling someone in basketball or backyard football. Do kids even play backyard football anymore or is it banned by current society?

Kids are using salty today like its new…….strange.

Maybe we can bring back:

-As If
-Nottttt
-Talk to the hand

They do seem to have been a bit quiet. I suspect they’re waiting for the spvp season to end before unveiling rewards because it’ll likely be the T2 Triumphant gear, ascended quality, as a skirmish reward, and they don’t want rewards-driven players to filter out of spvp just yet.

Salty because it has been neglected :P

Mighty Favazz.1546:

Gaile says otherwise…

My snowball snipes said otherwise to her in snowball mayhem yesterday.

Salty because of neglect, for every action (or lack there of) there is a reaction.

Would be interesting to see what the Red Posters respond to in the respective areas. And if how players present their ideas and what their threads are about stand in relation to the amount of Red Post-respons generated in that area of the forum.

Basically if the quality of the posts and the subject the posts touch in each area affect the amount of Dev responses.

@ragnar

I like posts like this.

It is possible you covered this and I missed it but …

Did you compare red post to total post or thread volume? In other words, did the activity of red post correlate to overall user activity in those particular forums.

If users are putting their attention more into PvE or PvP forums, you would expect there to be more Anet responses in those areas.

You could compare this to either post or thread count, but thread count might be more reasonable since sometimes users have extended arguments in these threads even after Anet has responded. Although bigger threads with higher post volume show where user interests are.

The assumption I’m making here is that Anet’s interests track user interests and not the other way around.