Showing Posts For Adrir.4971:
Alright. I’ll do it, it looks interesting.
Bumping to the top so others will see it and consider doing it. I’ve seen lots of survey type threads here, but none using an actual, proper form… so I’ve always wondered how people stat collect, and if they go through all of the qualitative answers everyone posts.
Thank you, Dinny.
Yes, I read every response I receive.
When I collect qualitative data, in this case open-ended questions, I usally export the responses to a tool called nVIVO. Within this tool, I go through the responses, reflect on them in the context of prior research, and then develop “codes”. I go through the responses again, coding the data as appropriate, which enables me to explore the data in terms of themes. Personally, I like to use visualisation tools, such as VOSViewer, to explore the themes that emerge and get a feel for how dominant they are.
The decision to just discuss things on the forum or use a dedicated online form can depend on the nature of the research. Having said that, I think the best form of research engagement is probably establishing a website (something similar to Nick Yee’s Daedalus Project). I would like to do this in the future, but it would be nice to have some good research to share first.
:-)
With Regards,
Adrir
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Dear community,
I am a research student at Brunel University in the UK. Over the past year I have been exploring the emergent cultures of Guild Wars. In particular, I have been researching
the role that the “Hall of Monuments” has had in tying the Guild Wars series together.
You can find my previous work here (email me if you’d like a copy):
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13614568.2012.746743
As I have discovered throughout countless hours of play and study, no individual Guild Wars experience is fully comprehensive. We each seem to construct quite different play experiences, forming notably diverse styles and perspectives. This does, however, complicate the way in which we conceptualise “peer recognition”. It does not appear as homogeneous (uniform) as I had previously believed. If that is, indeed, the case, then what does “peer recognition” actually mean to players? Are there different aspects, beyond those ‘captured by in-game titles’?
To begin to answer this question, I have produced a brief follow-up survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Peer_Recognition_in_GW2
This survey is shorter than my previous work, focusing on three open-ended questions alongside a small number of demographic questions. It can take up to 15-20 minutes to complete the survey, depending on the level of detail you provide in the open-ended responses and whether you log into the game to help estimate your playing time (e.g. using the /age command).
I take research ethics very seriously so I have ensured that all of the relevant precautions have been made – anonymity, confidentiality, security, and data protection. No group or individual will be identified in the findings, however anonymous excerpts may be printed in journal articles or conference proceedings.
I am happy to share my findings with any participant. Simply, provide an email address and indicate that you wish to be sent the findings at the end of the survey. Alternatively, you can email me directly.
Thank you for your time and attention.
Your help is much appreciated!
With Regards,
Adrir The Scholar
I’m not a programmer, so I can’t speak to the specific of the system, but it’s been made clear to me that there are no differentiating “artifacts” in the currently affected players’ character data. In other words, while we would reset players if it were possible, we cannot make any further retroactive fixes.
As Jeffrey stated, we’re come to a point where we want to make this clear so that players who have been waiting for a retroactive fix know what the status of this issue is. Thank you for your understanding on this matter.
Thank you for your clarification Jason.
I believe that, if the system were designed appropriately, a retroactive fix would have been possible. Artifacts should exist, based on the conditions required to reproduce the bug, by the behaviour of the players affected by it, and other data collected for the purpose of design analytics. However, I understand your position. This is a discussion to be had with the programming team if I ever meet them at a conference in the future.
There is a lesson that should be learned here.
I’ve said it before, we’ve fixed the bug to prevent it from affecting new players, but we CANNOT fix characters that have already been affected. There is NO differencetween a character that was sent to the Vigil because of the bug, and one that chose the Vigil, so there is no way to do any automatic fix. CS does NOT have the ability to change a character’s active story steps, so this is not something that can be dealt with on a case by case basis if you petition them. I wish I had better news, but I’m just being brutally honest.
Indeed, this is disappointing news.
Firstly: how can players enjoy a “personal story” knowing that any of their decisions might be ignored by the server, with no way to correct the error? This particular bug might have been fixed, but there may be others hidden in the code with similar consequences. The sense of agency I have over my character’s destiny alongside the interplay of projective and virtual identities are fundamental to my enjoyment of role-playing games. These senses have now been compromised and I feel as if the ‘magic circle’ has just collapsed around me.
Secondly, coming from a programming background: I must say I am completely astonished by the notion that, in this case, the relevant stakeholders lacked the foresight to ensure that the functionality neccessary for altering character states was exposed the to the customer support team. So much so, that I am not convinced that such a reputable developer would succumb to such a pitfall. Unless my conception of how the game servers and their related databases operate is completely wrong, such functionality must have existed at some point during development and testing. Is this a case of administrative considerations?
I saw this in another thread:
The problem is that there is literally no difference between a character who intentionally picked the Vigil and one who got sent there by the bug, so there’s simply no way to automatically fix affected characters. Our CS team does not have the ability to change your current quest or order, either, so it’s not something that we can manually fix on a case by case basis, either.
Please feel free to correct me, but as I understand it: while the customer support team does not have the ability to modify player states, the engineering team does. This has been evidenced by their retroactive repair of those players who have been experiencing skipped quests. Unfortunately, it is likely that the engineers are few in number and very busy, consequently being unable to deal with problems on a case-by-case basis.
So the core issue preventing a fix is the automated identification of those affected.
Correct?
It was possible for the engineers to identify those accounts affected by the ‘skipping quests’ bug because there were some obvious artefacts in their character data. Since these artefacts are based on completing/not completing quests, I would assume that such a checking function exists. A script was then written, whereby these accounts were singled out automatically and then repaired as appropriate.
However, I would argue there are some criteria that would identify many (if not most) of the accounts affected by the order choice issue. Have you considered a potential query along the lines of: " ‘race:sylvari’ AND ‘order:vigil’ AND !questComplete(‘quest_vigil_1’) " and possibly also checking data/time for active quest started/previous quest completed if such data exists?
(edited by Moderator)