Questions for the Community Team/Mods

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Dream In A Dream.7213

Dream In A Dream.7213

Q:

Why are so many critical posts about the path being deleted?
Yes they are negative, but they are still feedback about the patch.
I have seen too many valid topics being deleted/moved to trash and its getting a bit
unproductive. Is community team interested in wvw players feedback on the changes and the planned course of wvw? Or do you not care? So far the impression from your moderation and selective responses only to positive view on the patch and direction looks arrogant and unprofessional. I doubt that its the impression that you want to convey to your players.

Q1. I know you collect feedback from some of the forums for the team,
does it include this sub forum and also the negative feelings toward the patch by some of the posters?

Q2. Do any of you guys play WvW and on what servers?

Q3. Would you Please Please Please provide an AMA on reddit or something like that on this forum to facilitate some way of communication for the community about WvW?

PS: Our guild is having a meeting tomorrow about future in gw2. I am one of the people who would like for us to stay. But any lack of communication is really disheartening.

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Mark Katzbach

Mark Katzbach

Content Marketing Manager

Next

A:

Greetings Dream,

Allow me to take a moment to answer some of your questions and hopefully alleviate your concerns. In regards to your first question concerning posts and threads being removed, allow me to quote another member of our Community team who addressed this concern earlier this month:

Our Forum Code of Conduct is very clear regarding what is acceptable discussion. It’s true; we do not allow “I quit” threads or threads created simply to complain. We DO allow negative threads, as long as it remains constructive and respectful. Not just respectful towards each other, but also to our staff, which includes the Moderation Team, Dev Team, and more.

Our goal is to allow our community to express their thoughts and desires for the game, but not at the expense of our welcoming and respectful spaces.

That said, threads and posts are removed because they violate the forum code of conduct. We do not remove posts simply because we don’t like what people are saying. In short, it’s not what people say, but how they say it. As long as people engage in critical discussions in a way that treats developers and community members respectfully, there should not be an issue.

However, we are human and we do make mistakes. Which is why we encourage you to email forums@arena.net if you believe a moderation action was made in error.

We are always seeking to improve with moderation on the forums and having the opportunity to correct mistakes and educate those involved is the first step towards doing so.

In response to your question about how we collect and pass on feedback, the simple answer is “yes”. We have a rotating schedule of all the subforums, ensuring that each subforum is reviewed regularly and feedback from each subforum is passed on to the developers. Additionally, after an update, feedback is gathered from forums most affected by the update. In the case of the most recent update, WvW made up a significant amount of the feedback, and yes the negative feedback was included as part of that report. To be frank, I personally spent my entire afternoon yesterday reading and gathering feedback from the WvW subforum for yesterday’s report.

I cannot make promises regarding what actions the development teams will take based on the feedback we provide, but I can promise that they do hear your feedback, either by reading it directly here on the forums or through the reports we send them each day.

As part of the Community team, communication with players is always at the forefront of our minds and we’re always looking at methods to make improvements in that field. That said, we will leave this thread open today, so you can ask further questions, and share your concerns. Please note that if the discussion does not stay civil or constructive, we’ll close the thread.

Our hope is that by leaving this open for discussion, we can show that we are listening and working to improve our processes.

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046

<message deleted>
54 infractions and counting because a moderator doesn’t understand a joke when he/she sees it.
E.A.D.

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Nuzt.7894

Nuzt.7894

Greetings Dream,

Allow me to take a moment to answer some of your questions and hopefully alleviate your concerns. In regards to your first question concerning posts and threads being removed, allow me to quote another member of our Community team who addressed this concern earlier this month:

Our Forum Code of Conduct is very clear regarding what is acceptable discussion. It’s true; we do not allow “I quit” threads or threads created simply to complain. We DO allow negative threads, as long as it remains constructive and respectful. Not just respectful towards each other, but also to our staff, which includes the Moderation Team, Dev Team, and more.

Our goal is to allow our community to express their thoughts and desires for the game, but not at the expense of our welcoming and respectful spaces.

That said, threads and posts are removed because they violate the forum code of conduct. We do not remove posts simply because we don’t like what people are saying. In short, it’s not what people say, but how they say it. As long as people engage in critical discussions in a way that treats developers and community members respectfully, there should not be an issue.

However, we are human and we do make mistakes. Which is why we encourage you to email forums@arena.net if you believe a moderation action was made in error.

We are always seeking to improve with moderation on the forums and having the opportunity to correct mistakes and educate those involved is the first step towards doing so.

In response to your question about how we collect and pass on feedback, the simple answer is “yes”. We have a rotating schedule of all the subforums, ensuring that each subforum is reviewed regularly and feedback from each subforum is passed on to the developers. Additionally, after an update, feedback is gathered from forums most affected by the update. In the case of the most recent update, WvW made up a significant amount of the feedback, and yes the negative feedback was included as part of that report. To be frank, I personally spent my entire afternoon yesterday reading and gathering feedback from the WvW subforum for yesterday’s report.

I cannot make promises regarding what actions the development teams will take based on the feedback we provide, but I can promise that they do hear your feedback, either by reading it directly here on the forums or through the reports we send them each day.

As part of the Community team, communication with players is always at the forefront of our minds and we’re always looking at methods to make improvements in that field. That said, we will leave this thread open today, so you can ask further questions, and share your concerns. Please note that if the discussion does not stay civil or constructive, we’ll close the thread.

Our hope is that by leaving this open for discussion, we can show that we are listening and working to improve our processes.

This is all fine and well, but, what actions does Anet take when your Dev’s do not treat your players with respect and are not constructive ? I can think of a few replies/comments made by devon in the last couple weeks that have not been constructive and been very disrespectful to posters because he did not like what they had to say. I’m not suggesting this gives us posters the right to be kittens, and I’ll admit to several posts of my own that were not in good taste, but your team should be held to the same standards.

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: insanemaniac.2456

insanemaniac.2456

This is all fine and well, but, what actions does Anet take when your Dev’s do not treat your players with respect and are not constructive ? I can think of a few replies/comments made by devon in the last couple weeks that have not been constructive and been very disrespectful to posters because he did not like what they had to say. I’m not suggesting this gives us posters the right to be kittens, and I’ll admit to several posts of my own that were not in good taste, but your team should be held to the same standards.

let devon be himself.

they already squashed josh foreman, we dont need them censuring more of their people.

JQ: Rikkity
head here to discuss wvw without fear of infractions

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Safire.9143

Safire.9143

Tons of suggestions for Housing/Dueling/New pvp modes/GvG/fishing, did u pass these suggestions to devs ? i think they really didnt care about what ppls want, better make new pvp modes, because last update completly ruined wvw… WHY u make that ? WHY u didnt make something ppls want ?

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Nuzt.7894

Nuzt.7894

This is all fine and well, but, what actions does Anet take when your Dev’s do not treat your players with respect and are not constructive ? I can think of a few replies/comments made by devon in the last couple weeks that have not been constructive and been very disrespectful to posters because he did not like what they had to say. I’m not suggesting this gives us posters the right to be kittens, and I’ll admit to several posts of my own that were not in good taste, but your team should be held to the same standards.

let devon be himself.

they already squashed josh foreman, we dont need them censuring more of their people.

It is my opinion that “letting Devon be himself” is hurting more then helping, perhaps if he was forced to the same standards as us posters he might listen and consider what we are saying/asking before he has a tantrum and shuts down every viable opinion/suggestion.

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: etiolate.9185

etiolate.9185

Mark,

You guys always list forums@arena.net as a way to contact the community team about issues, but none of the emails I have sent there have been replied to. In my experience, this is simply a black hole to swallow valid complaints.

Also, can the forum team lay off of the constant thread moving and merging? Every day I post, I log in the next day to find my post was moved to another subforum or merged into another thread. When I go back to the conversation I was having, it’s either dead from the move or lost in the merge. More often than not, each thread that gets merged is a separate line of discussion than the thread its merged into. So while three threads may have the same general vague topic, they are three distinctly different conversations. When these threads are merged, it destroys the conversation. This leads your playerbase to believe you are trying to end critical conversations by sweeping them under the rug.

I know there was a GvG thread that I posted in that got moved to three different forums over a period of time. Eventually, it ended up in the same place it began. If your team members are not sure if a thread belongs where its put, then I advise you to trust your playerbase. If someone posts a link that raises a topic and then has the thread for the community to discuss that topic, it doesn’t belong in the links thread. It’s not a thread to share links. It’s a thread about a topic that is illustrated at said link.

Zed Zebes – SBI Mesmer

(edited by etiolate.9185)

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Mark Katzbach

Previous

Mark Katzbach

Content Marketing Manager

Next

We hold our staff members to the same standards as the players when posting on the forums and encourage them to exceed those standards. That said, developers are real people too and we prefer that our staff members post with their own personalities and not just rehash marketing speak. If a developer is not abiding by our standards we work with them to improve how they communicate on the forums.

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Nuzt.7894

Nuzt.7894

We hold our staff members to the same standards as the players when posting on the forums and encourage them to exceed those standards. That said, developers are real people too and we prefer that our staff members post with their own personalities and not just rehash marketing speak. If a developer is not abiding by our standards we work with them to improve how they communicate on the forums.

This is all I wanted to hear TY Mark.

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Neeho.3859

Neeho.3859

Q1. I know you collect feedback from some of the forums for the team,
does it include this sub forum and also the negative feelings toward the patch by some of the posters?

Q2. Do any of you guys play WvW and on what servers?

Q3. Would you Please Please Please provide an AMA on reddit or something like that on this forum to facilitate some way of communication for the community about WvW?

PS: Our guild is having a meeting tomorrow about future in gw2. I am one of the people who would like for us to stay. But any lack of communication is really disheartening.

So you, again, answer a question that has already been answered, but you do not answer the other 3 questions he asks. Why so evasive, Anet?

Ho/Neeho/Zorho/Hodown/Ephodemic
[SoCo] Solum Contego SoCo loco style!
Yak’s Bend

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Joey.2769

Joey.2769

Mark,
Thank you very much for taking the time to open up and communicate with us. I do have to ask is there a vague timeline you and the team are aiming for to collect the feedback necessary from the latest patch. The blowout matchups are now way worse for those on less WvW populated servers. The friends I have on the game and guild I am in are discussing leaving for good. I enjoy this game very much but I too share their concerns about the buffs.

Commander X Swagalicious X
Commander Twerknificient
Joey Bladow

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Rackhir Tanelorn.9123

Rackhir Tanelorn.9123

Mark, since you seem to be monitoring this thread…

Many people have requested separate Suggestion sub-forums under main Forum areas (PvP, WvW, PvE, Crafting, etc) – Can we please get that implemented as I see it only helping everybody:

  • Devs can focus on Suggestions for the areas they work on
  • People can post Suggestions where they can be seen by others interested in the same area/topic
  • Mods would have less threads to move around as people would be most often posting in the correct place to begin with
NAGA|TC

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Luna.9640

Luna.9640

We hold our staff members to the same standards as the players when posting on the forums and encourage them to exceed those standards. That said, developers are real people too and we prefer that our staff members post with their own personalities and not just rehash marketing speak. If a developer is not abiding by our standards we work with them to improve how they communicate on the forums.

There is 1 rule of the “Forum Code of Conduct” that literally gets abused by every mod and used to censorship – “not leading to constructive discussion”

Can you please work it to be more specific/clear and when a certain topic gets deleted the mods should 100% clearly state what word/sentence w/e part of the thread/post is against the rules exactly.

I’ve my topic deleted just because someone else that posted there was breaking the rules.However i got my topic deleted without this “little” detail pointed so i had to go through mailing forums@arena.net waste time and get upset just because your mods are too lazy to point out the real reason for their action or hide it under a totally not specific – “not leading to constructive discussion”

Like you devs/mods are human we forum community are human as well.

(edited by Luna.9640)

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Sarrs.4831

Sarrs.4831

Mark, since you seem to be monitoring this thread…

Many people have requested separate Suggestion sub-forums under main Forum areas (PvP, WvW, PvE, Crafting, etc) – Can we please get that implemented as I see it only helping everybody:

  • Devs can focus on Suggestions for the areas they work on
  • People can post Suggestions where they can be seen by others interested in the same area/topic
  • Mods would have less threads to move around as people would be most often posting in the correct place to begin with

I wonder if the mods take +1s into account. This’d be a fantastic change.

We hold our staff members to the same standards as the players when posting on the forums and encourage them to exceed those standards. That said, developers are real people too and we prefer that our staff members post with their own personalities and not just rehash marketing speak. If a developer is not abiding by our standards we work with them to improve how they communicate on the forums.

There is 1 rule of the “Forum Code of Conduct” that literally gets abused by every mod and used to censorship – “not leading to constructive discussion”

Can you please work it to be more specific/clear and when a certain topic gets deleted the mods should 100% clearly state what word/sentence w/e part of the thread/post is against the rules exactly.

That’d be super nice. One of my posts got ‘trimmed’ by the moderators and they didn’t even give me a call afterwards.

Nalhadia – Kaineng

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Stark.1350

Stark.1350

How dare any of you ask for “punishment” if the Dev’s get a little snarky. With the amount of hate, vitriol and absolutely ridiculous comments I’ve seen flung at the dev’s, you should point your fingers at yourselves before pointing anywhere else. Respect is a two way street. If I were a mod, I’d have banned half of you off of here.

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: ParaldaWind.4523

ParaldaWind.4523

I started a very well mannered discussion on why I feel like the thread merging is hurting discussion on this subforum. The tone and responses were very similar to this thread. Nothing was disrespectful or against the ToS, but it was removed for, and I quote, “complaining about moderation.”

Are we not allowed to discuss how our threads are being derailed by overmoderation and merging? My point remains that the flow of discussion is disrupted when threads are merged and the resulting merged threads are very very hard to follow. I cannot see how anyone, developers and moderators included, would be able to discern any kind of information from these fragmented threads with 30 different topics going around.

No tears, only dreams
[PYRO]
Maguuma – youtube.com/pyrogw2

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: TexRob.5183

TexRob.5183

Just another person coming to post that our guild is losing numbers, and discussions of “what game can we go to?” has been brought up a lot. The only reason the game has not lost more WVW players is because a percentage of players are willing to just server transfer, often multiple times, to get to a better WVW experience.

I like GW2, a lot, and I think it’s way better in almost all aspects from release. PVE, events, etc, all great, but WVW is getting worse and worse, and this patch was a huge change in the wrong direction. I don’t like to say, the final nail in the coffin, but it very well might be for a lot of people. I hope something will be done soon, before it comes to that.

Tex Rob 80 War [RICH] GoM

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Dream In A Dream.7213

Dream In A Dream.7213

Greetings Dream,

Allow me to take a moment to answer some of your questions and hopefully alleviate your concerns. In regards to your first question concerning posts and threads being removed, allow me to quote another member of our Community team who addressed this concern earlier this month:

Our Forum Code of Conduct is very clear regarding what is acceptable discussion. It’s true; we do not allow “I quit” threads or threads created simply to complain. We DO allow negative threads, as long as it remains constructive and respectful. Not just respectful towards each other, but also to our staff, which includes the Moderation Team, Dev Team, and more.

Our goal is to allow our community to express their thoughts and desires for the game, but not at the expense of our welcoming and respectful spaces.

That said, threads and posts are removed because they violate the forum code of conduct. We do not remove posts simply because we don’t like what people are saying. In short, it’s not what people say, but how they say it. As long as people engage in critical discussions in a way that treats developers and community members respectfully, there should not be an issue.

However, we are human and we do make mistakes. Which is why we encourage you to email forums@arena.net if you believe a moderation action was made in error.

We are always seeking to improve with moderation on the forums and having the opportunity to correct mistakes and educate those involved is the first step towards doing so.

In response to your question about how we collect and pass on feedback, the simple answer is “yes”. We have a rotating schedule of all the subforums, ensuring that each subforum is reviewed regularly and feedback from each subforum is passed on to the developers. Additionally, after an update, feedback is gathered from forums most affected by the update. In the case of the most recent update, WvW made up a significant amount of the feedback, and yes the negative feedback was included as part of that report. To be frank, I personally spent my entire afternoon yesterday reading and gathering feedback from the WvW subforum for yesterday’s report.

I cannot make promises regarding what actions the development teams will take based on the feedback we provide, but I can promise that they do hear your feedback, either by reading it directly here on the forums or through the reports we send them each day.

As part of the Community team, communication with players is always at the forefront of our minds and we’re always looking at methods to make improvements in that field. That said, we will leave this thread open today, so you can ask further questions, and share your concerns. Please note that if the discussion does not stay civil or constructive, we’ll close the thread.

Our hope is that by leaving this open for discussion, we can show that we are listening and working to improve our processes.

Thank you Mark! This reply actually makes a big difference. A lot of negativity on this sub forum stems from the perception of lack of care or interest by arena.net. Knowing that at least some of the feedback is getting to the developers gives some of us hope.

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Mark Katzbach

Previous

Mark Katzbach

Content Marketing Manager

Next

Tons of suggestions for Housing/Dueling/New pvp modes/GvG/fishing, did u pass these suggestions to devs ? i think they really didnt care about what ppls want, better make new pvp modes, because last update completly ruined wvw… WHY u make that ? WHY u didnt make something ppls want ?

Suggestions are passed on the same as other feedback. Something to keep in mind is that many of the types of suggestions in your examples are things that take significant development time. For example, at the same time there were many requests for an LFG tool here on the forums, the team was working hard behind the scenes to make it happen. We are working to improve transparency, but at the same time we try to avoid making promises until we are sure we can keep them.

Mark,

You guys always list forums@arena.net as a way to contact the community team about issues, but none of the emails I have sent there have been replied to. In my experience, this is simply a black hole to swallow valid complaints.

Also, can the forum team lay off of the constant thread moving and merging? Every day I post, I log in the next day to find my post was moved to another subforum or merged into another thread. When I go back to the conversation I was having, it’s either dead from the move or lost in the merge. More often than not, each thread that gets merged is a separate line of discussion than the thread its merged into. So while three threads may have the same general vague topic, they are three distinctly different conversations. When these threads are merged, it destroys the conversation. This leads your playerbase to believe you are trying to end critical conversations by sweeping them under the rug.

I know there was a GvG thread that I posted in that got moved to three different forums over a period of time. Eventually, it ended up in the same place it began. If your team members are not sure if a thread belongs where its put, then I advise you to trust your playerbase. If someone posts a link that raises a topic and then has the thread for the community to discuss that topic, it doesn’t belong in the links thread. It’s not a thread to share links. It’s a thread about a topic that is illustrated at said link.

I can assure you that we do read all emails sent to forums@arena.net, and with the exception of simple apologies or insults, we do respond. As a matter of curiosity, I did check our ticket database against your email address, etiolate, and came up with no results. I can only surmise that your emails were lost somehow in transit to our inbox.

As for thread moving and merging, these are unfortunately a necessary evil of forum management. Threads are regularly moved to the proper subforum not because we’re trying to hide them, but because we are trying to keep the forums topical. If we ceased moving threads, over 50% of all discussion on the forums would end up in Guild Wars 2 Discussion and the smaller subforums, like BLTC and the race/profession forums would dry up entirely.

On the topic of merging, I have noticed the impression that we merge to hide discussion, and this could not be further from the truth. As I mentioned previously, we pass on feedback to the development team regularly. What makes that more difficult is having anywhere from 5 to 50 threads on a single topic. I understand that each thread may have its own sub-conversations taking place, but when it comes to being able to parse and provide feedback to the developers, one thread per topic is best. I disagree with your stance that merging destroys conversations. I encourage everybody to use quote tags to keep a conversation going post-merge by quoting the posts you are replying to.

In response to your final point, our moderation team is still getting used to the changes in how we handle GvG threads, and mistakes can be made occasionally. We are working hard to get everybody up to speed on the new policies regarding those threads. As for threads being moved to Linksville, I touched on this briefly not too long ago but I will repeat myself here. If the primary focus point of a new thread is a link, it will be moved to Linksville. If you, or anybody else is providing a link with the intention of holding a discussion related to its content, please provide your discussion points in the thread with the link. If a new thread contains only a link and the word “discuss” it will always be moved to Linksville.

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: BladeDVD.6234

BladeDVD.6234

To be frank, I personally spent my entire afternoon yesterday reading and gathering feedback from the WvW subforum for yesterday’s report.

I don’t know the format of your reports, so this might not be practical, but what about posting them in the related forums so people can see what is being reported to the developers. If it can just be copy/pasted that might be worth extra time. Of course if there is personal commentary given randomly throughout the report this wouldn’t work. I was hoping just the bare bones stuff “someone suggested this, players are asking why you can’t do this instead” would be easy enough to cut/paste from the write ups.

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: ParaldaWind.4523

ParaldaWind.4523

On the topic of merging, I have noticed the impression that we merge to hide discussion, and this could not be further from the truth. As I mentioned previously, we pass on feedback to the development team regularly. What makes that more difficult is having anywhere from 5 to 50 threads on a single topic. I understand that each thread may have its own sub-conversations taking place, but when it comes to being able to parse and provide feedback to the developers, one thread per topic is best. I disagree with your stance that merging destroys conversations. I encourage everybody to use quote tags to keep a conversation going post-merge by quoting the posts you are replying to.

The problem with merging, as I brought up in my original post about it that was deleted, is that it becomes increasingly harder for developers and players to know what the topic is even about. There are posts about lag, zergs, roaming, stat buffs, bugs, suggestions, etc, and many deserve to be in different topics because when merged the posts don’t make any sense anymore. A lot of response posts don’t use the quote function, and it’s hard to tell where a new topic starts and an old one ends.

It’s not the players’ fault that there are a lot of complicated issues with this new patch. There are probably 9 different threads now in that one merged post, and many of them have entirely different angles to approach a complex issue. Merging more into it is doing the entire community a disservice, and even worse, stifling discussion on these practices by removing posts about them does NOT help public opinion on the matter.

No tears, only dreams
[PYRO]
Maguuma – youtube.com/pyrogw2

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: etiolate.9185

etiolate.9185

I can assure you that we do read all emails sent to forums@arena.net, and with the exception of simple apologies or insults, we do respond. As a matter of curiosity, I did check our ticket database against your email address, etiolate, and came up with no results. I can only surmise that your emails were lost somehow in transit to our inbox.

As for thread moving and merging, these are unfortunately a necessary evil of forum management. Threads are regularly moved to the proper subforum not because we’re trying to hide them, but because we are trying to keep the forums topical. If we ceased moving threads, over 50% of all discussion on the forums would end up in Guild Wars 2 Discussion and the smaller subforums, like BLTC and the race/profession forums would dry up entirely.

On the topic of merging, I have noticed the impression that we merge to hide discussion, and this could not be further from the truth. As I mentioned previously, we pass on feedback to the development team regularly. What makes that more difficult is having anywhere from 5 to 50 threads on a single topic. I understand that each thread may have its own sub-conversations taking place, but when it comes to being able to parse and provide feedback to the developers, one thread per topic is best. I disagree with your stance that merging destroys conversations. I encourage everybody to use quote tags to keep a conversation going post-merge by quoting the posts you are replying to.

In response to your final point, our moderation team is still getting used to the changes in how we handle GvG threads, and mistakes can be made occasionally. We are working hard to get everybody up to speed on the new policies regarding those threads. As for threads being moved to Linksville, I touched on this briefly not too long ago but I will repeat myself here. If the primary focus point of a new thread is a link, it will be moved to Linksville. If you, or anybody else is providing a link with the intention of holding a discussion related to its content, please provide your discussion points in the thread with the link. If a new thread contains only a link and the word “discuss” it will always be moved to Linksville.

Mark, thanks for replying.

I send in my forum emails from a email separate from my account email. I try to use my account email as little as possible to limits exposure to the web and keep it safe. If I need to use my account email when addressing issues then that’s my fault.

I really do disagree about the thread merging’s impact on discussion. Many times, when you guys make those mega-merge threads, I can no longer find my last post or anyone’s reply to the post. There’s just too much confusion and clustering of conversations. Whatever was going on pre-merge, it tends to end post-merge. Conversation normally re-launches itself based on whatever ends up at the end of the merged thread. This is because the line of discussion no longer makes sense. One post doesn’t naturally lead into the next post. It’s like phone lines getting crossed. (Yes, I am old enough to remember the land line days.)

Zed Zebes – SBI Mesmer

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: TheAmpca.1753

TheAmpca.1753

It’s funny because earlier today I had a post removed for being exactly what this topic was. I made a complaint about how Mods seem to shove several similar yet very different threads together which makes it VERY hard to find what you are looking for. They treat these merged threads like they should be a new subforum where ALL discussion about some very broad topic should all be thrown together. My post wasn’t the most eloquently written but it wasn’t a complete “I HATE THIS” without constructively posting what I didn’t like about it.

yet of course i get this response with my message being deleted

Posting to complain about forum moderation is in violation of the forum code of conduct. If you feel any action taken by a moderator was inappropriate and wish to appeal, send an email to forums@arena.net.

Great to hear that I can’t talk on the forums about how the forums should be run.

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Prysin.8542

Prysin.8542

We are working to improve transparency, but at the same time we try to avoid making promises until we are sure we can keep them.

Regarding this, i come from a small gaming comunity of modders, related to an entirely different game altogether, however, the devteam over there did the same as ArenaNet is currently doing. Shutting up and only posting immediately prior to a patch. This way of working, on a small community, imposed two big problems. First of all, it alienated the entire playerbase to the devteam, and caused massive conspiracy/rumors to flourish. It also raised the hostility in the community itself, as friends of devs/those who talked to/with the devs usually knew “too much”. The same issue can be seen here, in a greater scale. People post “leaked notes”, spread rumors that this and that was said, flame and hate on eachother. It can all be traced back to the main problem of people being kept in the dark.
That same modding community, they turned around and made their development process completely transparent. We all knew that we wouldnt be heard when we raged about the changes coming in the far distance, but we also knew how to prepare for the change and how to minimize the damage/maximize the profit. In the end, it did slowly cure the rotting community, but the lesson stands; either you are fully transparent, or you don’t share at all. The latter, is more socially damaging then the former, however the former will put immense pressure on the devteam to do their job properly.

Another thing i want to question is the lack of action taken towards persisting bugs in the game. We know they’re there, you know they’re there. They ain’t no secret or mystery (except what causes them). However these bugs, many of which causes lag issues, seem down prioritized, and while crash bug fixes are great, why are you not prioritizing these lag inducing bugs? I know bugfixing is a time consuming and expensive, not to mention frustrating job. But as a gamer, there is nothing more annoying then lag.

Lv 80 Guard, Ranger, Ele, Thief, warr, engi
Currently @ some T1 server in EU

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Mark Katzbach

Previous

Mark Katzbach

Content Marketing Manager

Next

Mark,
Thank you very much for taking the time to open up and communicate with us. I do have to ask is there a vague timeline you and the team are aiming for to collect the feedback necessary from the latest patch. The blowout matchups are now way worse for those on less WvW populated servers. The friends I have on the game and guild I am in are discussing leaving for good. I enjoy this game very much but I too share their concerns about the buffs.

We don’t have a strict timeline on these matters. As I mentioned earlier, we regularly send feedback on all aspects of the game over to the teams. We don’t have a timeline where we only focus on the latest update. It’s true the latest update is a heavy focus in the days following, but we also keep an eye out for any feedback that we feel should be raised, regardless of how long ago that content was updated or what aspect of the game it covers. I can assure you, we will be keeping an eye out for WvW feedback regarding matchups, the upcoming season and any other concerns that may crop up.

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Slomo.1029

Slomo.1029

That said, developers are real people too and we prefer that our staff members post with their own personalities and not just rehash marketing speak.

Either your developers are the perfect marketing speakers or you quite simply do the exact opposite.
Just after the recent blog from Josh I’d say its the second option.

~ Gandara

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Mark Katzbach

Previous

Mark Katzbach

Content Marketing Manager

Next

Mark, since you seem to be monitoring this thread…

Many people have requested separate Suggestion sub-forums under main Forum areas (PvP, WvW, PvE, Crafting, etc) – Can we please get that implemented as I see it only helping everybody:

  • Devs can focus on Suggestions for the areas they work on
  • People can post Suggestions where they can be seen by others interested in the same area/topic
  • Mods would have less threads to move around as people would be most often posting in the correct place to begin with

I can bring this up with the rest of the team and affected development teams to see if/how helpful this would be to them. No promises though.

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Mark Katzbach

Previous

Mark Katzbach

Content Marketing Manager

Next

There is 1 rule of the “Forum Code of Conduct” that literally gets abused by every mod and used to censorship – “not leading to constructive discussion”

Can you please work it to be more specific/clear and when a certain topic gets deleted the mods should 100% clearly state what word/sentence w/e part of the thread/post is against the rules exactly.

I’ve my topic deleted just because someone else that posted there was breaking the rules.However i got my topic deleted without this “little” detail pointed so i had to go through mailing forums@arena.net waste time and get upset just because your mods are too lazy to point out the real reason for their action or hide it under a totally not specific – “not leading to constructive discussion”

Like you devs/mods are human we forum community are human as well but the only difference is we are costumers on top of that so this should never be forgotten.

We are currently working with our mod team to improve moderation responses and communication. Please email any issues you have with moderation to forums@arena.net. I know some of you feel that’s a tired response, but in addition to fielding appeals, emailing us there helps us to identify where the mods could use improvement and communicate this information back to the team. Since we’re not omniscient, we depend on you guys to let us know when mistakes are being made.

The reason we typically don’t allow discussion of moderation actions on the forums is because threads of that type can quickly get out of hand with 100 people jumping in to complain about their personal experiences with colorful adjectives and insults.

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Luna.9640

Luna.9640

There is 1 rule of the “Forum Code of Conduct” that literally gets abused by every mod and used to censorship – “not leading to constructive discussion”

Can you please work it to be more specific/clear and when a certain topic gets deleted the mods should 100% clearly state what word/sentence w/e part of the thread/post is against the rules exactly.

I’ve my topic deleted just because someone else that posted there was breaking the rules.However i got my topic deleted without this “little” detail pointed so i had to go through mailing forums@arena.net waste time and get upset just because your mods are too lazy to point out the real reason for their action or hide it under a totally not specific – “not leading to constructive discussion”

Like you devs/mods are human we forum community are human as well but the only difference is we are costumers on top of that so this should never be forgotten.

We are currently working with our mod team to improve moderation responses and communication. Please email any issues you have with moderation to forums@arena.net. I know some of you feel that’s a tired response, but in addition to fielding appeals, emailing us there helps us to identify where the mods could use improvement and communicate this information back to the team. Since we’re not omniscient, we depend on you guys to let us know when mistakes are being made.

The reason we typically don’t allow discussion of moderation actions on the forums is because threads of that type can quickly get out of hand with 100 people jumping in to complain about their personal experiences with colorful adjectives and insults.

Thats really positive to hear from you.Thank you for taking a time to talk to the community more Mark.Thank you and other people involved with relaying our feedbacks to devs and help improve our game.

Big shoutout to [CC] Danicia for the great job and working to improve the forum and mods/cc team. (the “Gaile” of the community!)

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: ilr.9675

ilr.9675

Big shoutout to [CC] Danicia for the great job and working to improve the forum and mods/cc team. (the “Gaile” of the community!)

+1 to this …. There are definitely good efforts being made to keep this whole thing fair, and any of us can see who’s making things better overall if we just take a breath and look closely.

We do not remove posts simply because we don’t like what people are saying. In short, it’s not what people say, but how they say it.

Well that’s an instant contradiction right there… and I’m not even taking sides in this whole ordeal over the WvW changes and I’m definitely not picking on Martin … I like the Bucketmancer, I support him, I know this is not his first language but his word choice here is still completely consistent with Anet’s rather inconsistent and a bit zealous standing on Forum moderation ever since they moved away from the “Fan-Portal” program.

I’ve had to contest atleast 2 sets of infractions myself here on these forums and atleast a couple were overturned because the actions taken were indeed taken in Haste and on a basis of they just didn’t like how it was said. …that’s not to say I don’t make mistakes either, but let’s be honest here: Posts are routinely deleted, moved to trash, and just basically censored without explanation and for lots of different reasons that are just as questionable as branding something a “Complain thread”…. A BUG THREAD, is a Complain Thread… semantically speaking.

In other words to make this long post short: It’s still all about subjective judgment calls by Mods, the CM team, and even some Devs who also appear to have full access to the Moderating tools. When caught making a mistake, they make no apologies or compensation about it either beyond just “not banning people outright” as quickly as they otherwise would once the warnings cascade into infractions. The infraction point system itself is also frought with subjectiveness. …let me end this by comparing it to Guru’s which is atleast somewhat Transparent:

Guru’s moderating & infraction system is basically an “HP bar” that is always visible and eventually they’ll disappear on their own once enough time has passed based on good behavior. This promotes good behavior instead of just rolling a new account or getting a new IP/Serial# and then “Socking”. While Anet might have had a tumultuous past with Guru sometimes, I think it’s clear on this tangent where basic psychology favors one system over another and it’s even more apparent when you look at where both communities are trending right now.

(edited by ilr.9675)

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: CC Danicia.1394

Previous

CC Danicia.1394

Community Coordinator

Next

Big shoutout to [CC] Danicia for the great job and working to improve the forum and mods/cc team. (the “Gaile” of the community!)

Thanks! I enjoy working on the Community Team and working to improve processes. I"m kinda nerdy that way.

We absolutely appreciate everyone who’s stayed on topic here, and has been incredibly patient and giving positive criticism.

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Burnfall.9573

Burnfall.9573

(I understand what you’re saying mark and I Promise i will behave.)

My only question to you is that, is it in Arena.net vision in having un-fair class mechanics dictate gw2 game play? and if not, what are the appripriote steps Arena.net will take in preventing them from ever happening again?

Like for example’ how un-counterable perma-steath and perma-stun are controlling gw2 world.

I’m looking forward to your answer since you’re encuraging us to do so.

Also, it is tbe question that the majoirty of foum players had continiouslly been asking since day 1,

Thanks in advance.

Advocate of Justice, Liberty and Truth

(edited by Burnfall.9573)

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Mark Katzbach

Previous

Mark Katzbach

Content Marketing Manager

Next

(I understand what you’re saying mark and I Promise i will behave.)

My only question to you is that, is it in Arena.net vision in having un-fair class mechanics dictate gw2 game play?

Like for example’ how un-counterable perma-steath and perma-stun are controlling gw2 world.

I’m looking forward to your answer since you’re encuraging us to do so.

Also, it is tbe question that the majoirty of foum players had continiouslly been asking since day 1,

Thanks in advance.

This thread is in regards to forums, moderation and the like. I don’t have answers to questions on bugs, profession mechanics or future design plans. If you would like answers to those questions, I recommend you spin up a new thread in the appropriate subforum.

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: munkiman.3068

munkiman.3068

I’d REALLY like to know, (speaking of using the quoting system) why you guys chose to develop your own forum software. There are some really good options already built that are so much more user friendly and straight forward, not to mention as secure as possible, that it seems like a waste to put the effort into it. It’s like reinventing the wheel, only it’s one lopsided wheel.

Overall i think the moderation on the forums is quite well managed (speaking as an administrator of various forums for over 18 years). It’s be nice though if the forums themselves we a bit more user friendly and more in line with most other forum software out there.

[TAO] Founder/Owner and Administrator for the NSP Server Website

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Valik Shin.9027

Valik Shin.9027

I can understand the need to merge threads and delete some but sometimes it gets out of hand. There are many times the op post is very simular to another but it becomes a completely different conversation after 10 posters. When these threads get merged they kill the conversation. Some of the best discussion I have seen is 2 or 3 people just hashing back and forth ideas on a very specific part of something. When the threads are merged and there is 3 or 4 conversations going on all but one tends to die out and the comuity and the devs have lost out on what could be a very interesting and helpful conversation. That’s not to say it always happends and I know people can be very busy. But sometimes there needs to be more thought on what threads need merged

Valik Shin
Darkwood Legion [DARK]
Yak’s Bend

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Valik Shin.9027

Valik Shin.9027

On a side not I would like to thank you mark for taking the time to answer some of our question. Nice to see what you guys have to say even if its just to say that you don’t have an answer or that something is being looked at

Valik Shin
Darkwood Legion [DARK]
Yak’s Bend

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Jayne.9251

Jayne.9251

We are currently working with our mod team to improve moderation responses and communication. Please email any issues you have with moderation to forums@arena.net. I know some of you feel that’s a tired response, but in addition to fielding appeals, emailing us there helps us to identify where the mods could use improvement and communicate this information back to the team. Since we’re not omniscient, we depend on you guys to let us know when mistakes are being made.

Yup. I can vouch for this. There was an overzealous mod who was repeatedly deleting some of my posts because he didn’t understand the context. Mark himself replied to my query about it and managed to correct the issue on his end.

L’enfer, c’est les autres

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Mark Katzbach

Previous

Mark Katzbach

Content Marketing Manager

Next

I can understand the need to merge threads and delete some but sometimes it gets out of hand. There are many times the op post is very simular to another but it becomes a completely different conversation after 10 posters. When these threads get merged they kill the conversation. Some of the best discussion I have seen is 2 or 3 people just hashing back and forth ideas on a very specific part of something. When the threads are merged and there is 3 or 4 conversations going on all but one tends to die out and the comuity and the devs have lost out on what could be a very interesting and helpful conversation. That’s not to say it always happends and I know people can be very busy. But sometimes there needs to be more thought on what threads need merged

I get your concern, but please understand that if we left every slightly divergent topic with 2-3 people having a discussion, it can dominate the page and detract from people trying to participate in other topics. For example, yesterday bloodlust topics dominated more than half of the topics on the front page.

That said, we will try to be more careful in what does and does not get merged, but we do have to decide based on what’s best for the forums as a whole and not just the players participating in the affected threads.

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Xom.9264

Xom.9264

arrogant and unprofessional.

Actually never seen a good MMO takes such a bad turn like GW2 just unreal the arrogance of doing exactly what players dont want…..

Xomox ~Human Necro/Engineer ET

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Jansy.8463

Jansy.8463

Q2. Do any of you guys play WvW and on what servers?

Hello Mark, can you please elaborate on this question please. We (the WvW community) feel as though this is a main reason for the massive disconnect between players and forum moderators.

Thanks in advance.

Gold Cape via Hall of Monuments pls…

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: colesy.8490

colesy.8490

So ANet, you actually read the dungeon forum? Is that why there’s been I believe one message from you (Colin saying TA was high priority for revamp) in months?

You guys in the WvW section think you have it bad, the only interaction we get in the dungeon forum is ModBot smacking us with infractions or sending threads in to “trash can”. We were even able to fill the entire first page with threads about the same topic before anything even happened.

Sanctum of Rall (NA) – [LOD] – PvE/Dungeon Phantasm Mesmer build
Morrï (Mesmer) | Serah Mahariel (Guardian) | Morrï Mahariel (Warrior)
“colesy’s on rampage today. Slaying casuals left, right and centre” – spoj

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Thundolfe.9302

Thundolfe.9302

I get your concern, but please understand that if we left every slightly divergent topic with 2-3 people having a discussion, it can dominate the page and detract from people trying to participate in other topics. For example, yesterday bloodlust topics dominated more than half of the topics on the front page.\.

I think people understand YOUR concern, but please also understand that you recently made a huge change to WvW, so of course the forum is going to be filled with threads on that change. Sticking them all into one “megathread” just makes it extremely disjointed and hard for the community to understand.

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Niim.9260

Niim.9260

These forums are without question the most over moderated forums of any game I have every played. Historically I might get one infraction for the entire time I played a game, in GW2 I have received so many infractions that I stopped caring about them entirely. Why bother trying to stay within the rules if you get random infractions regardless of your efforts.

~ AoN ~

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Mark Katzbach

Previous

Mark Katzbach

Content Marketing Manager

Next

So ANet, you actually read the dungeon forum? Is that why there’s been I believe one message from you (Colin saying TA was high priority for revamp) in months?

You guys in the WvW section think you have it bad, the only interaction we get in the dungeon forum is ModBot smacking us with infractions or sending threads in to “trash can”. We were even able to fill the entire first page with threads about the same topic before anything even happened.

As I mentioned earlier, we do regularly read every subforum in order to pass feedback on to the development team. We can recommend to the team that they try to post more often in there, but I can make no promises. While it is part of the community team’s job to keep up with the forums, developers have other responsibilities and don’t always have time to post. I will see what can be done when I bring it up with the team.

Questions for the Community Team/Mods

in WvW

Posted by: Mark Katzbach

Previous

Mark Katzbach

Content Marketing Manager

All right everybody, the day is about over and I’m about to head home. Thanks for keeping it civil in here and my apologies to the questions I did not have time to get to. Have a good evening, night, morning, afternoon or whatever time of day it is in your corner of the globe.