Guild Wars 2

Lilith Ajit.6173:

@Nike, I get that. I just feel like (like this morning) this thread had been pushed all the way to the second page, and stickies don’t work all that well, because people not always look at the stickies (see the Dolyak express). So in terms of exposure, the general discussion forum gets so much traffic for other unrelated things that it hinders the visibility by being here.

My opinion of course…

I completely agree the process needs to get better exposure.

I mostly find my way to Dev “hotspots” by using the Dev-Tracker. They tend to revisit places they’ve been recently. Its how I chased down BobbyStein to have a little chat about Player Voice in the Scarlet Climax.

I don’t think having a single “CDI Category/Board” is wrong, I just think that IF doing so pulls the threads out from in front of the faces of casual forum-goers the move is self-defeating. We have a CDI compilation stickied – make its steady maintenance steady for one thing.

And I should have said it earlier when the post was made – having CDI activity (start dates, stop dates, branches opening, whatever) broadcast via the big red announcements at the top of the page we see for things like server updates is a BRILLIANT idea. I think the mere existence of the CDI process needs a blog post linked via the log-in news feed, and I think when the reviews of “How CDI has impacted the new release” is gathered it also needs treatment comparable to the Evon Gnashblade Sales pages – get the word out there that ArenaNet treats players as part of the solution and not just part of the flock.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

I really thought everyone (except for 1 or 2) thought that the CDI should have its own sub forum?

Maybe most of the people in this thread feel that way, but the number of names in here isn’t so much as a measurable fraction of the daily foot traffic through the boards… which is kind of a sign even this thread isn’t getting as much exposure as it should, since we’re sitting here in council deciding how people will have to comport themselves to have a say in their future.

I’ve half-jokingly offered to write a tutorial on “How to get a Dev to respond to you” which was equal parts writing tips and self-examination (“why do you want a Dev to respond?”). I would like to take steps to elevate the discussion so that the CDIs can start faster and reach higher in terms of actionable points gathered. On the Developers side there’s some structural ideas, and things like having a Primer to make the subject clearer. On the player side there’s raising our game… I wonder if we might be better served with some guides or tutorials sticky-ed somewhere (wherever CDIs are achieved after they close maybe) and links to those guides included in the “These are the Rules” posts that follow the Primer/Initial post in my imagination. Not everyone will follow a link to a guide, but not everyone will give the slightest thought to following a formulaic proposal format either. I’d rather try to educate than to ram round pegs through square holes. I’d rather the process of improvement be voluntary and uplifting than mandatory, enforced on pain of moderation.

And I’ve given Chris grief about being an optimist …

The evolution thread is open right now. Perhaps you should drop in and ask if such a thread would be possible. There have been similar questions about having a CDI thread hosted by their staff artists and if they do that, maybe showing off art for review and inspiration would be appropriate.

“No one’s arguing the need for a plan… it’s just you plan is stupid and won’t work.”

“Bear approves of you. I can feel her little tail wagging in my heart.”

Chrispy.5641:

Since the dye kits had about a 3.3% chance to give something new (and what little drop rate research that can be found on the wiki confirms this as well), I decided to not try to spend anymore since the chances were pretty darn small, and I didn’t want to spend anymore gold on trying.

Interesting – my results have always been considerably higher – I got 5 exclusive dyes out of my last attempt with 45 kits. at the time I felt that it was a nice haul if not mindblowing.

Looking at your data~

Common x16
Uncommon x 6
Rare x 7
Exclusive x1

Total: 30

I would consider that outcome a little low, but not statistically freakish. But I’ve seen similar results where uncommons seem even less likely than rares. The idea that commons make up fully 50% of the first roll for rarity is one of those round numbers that’s just so appealing to the human mind, its almost a gimme when analyzing the results.

Mystic.5934:

bare minimum, you need double-digit results. So 10 rare dyes.

Ug. To build a plausible sample size – not an EXACTING one but an INFORMATIVE one, you typically don’t need more than the divisor squared. if there is a 1 in 5 chance of something occurring, 25 attempts will begin to clue you in at what you are seeing. If the event you are looking for is 1 time in 20, 400 attempts is plenty to give you a serviceable approximation for what’s going on. Especially in human-written systems were numbers tend to conform to integers and extremely low numbers of significant digits.

My experience is that the 25 colors are NOT weighted equally and that the 6 exclusive colors come up rather less than 24% of the time. Enough less to make me think the initial ‘roll’ is for rarity, and then when rarity is determined a second roll is made on a table for that rarity with each color of the same rarity having an equal weight on that table. If I had to guess, the chances of getting any result from the exclusive table is an easily human-readable, round number like 10% or possibly 15%. With a 1 in 10 outcome 100 tries is not exact science, but its plenty for casual assessment of the value of the purchase.

Ectos only have 4 outcomes, and the rarest outcome isn’t worse than 1 time in 20. A sample size of 6,000 is gross overkill.

5,000 samples is for when you’re dealing with something that is both rare (likelihood under 1 in 70) or where you’re dealing with a natural probability rather than an human-selected one and for some reason you’re really, really stressing over that 4th significant digit in your results. Or maybe this is just the difference in having worked as a technician after learning the stuff as a mathematician . You don’t need perfection, you need to understand how good or bad the data available to you is likely to be. You can hit “pretty dang good” a long, long time before you can say “with near absolute certainty”…

Egon Vidar.9125:

Scarlet has certainly put things into perspective.

That the entire race needs to be fed to the Centaurs?

ILLSPAWN.5340:

I love the logic behind this post. I bought a 2013 Camaro and the 2014 Camaro is better so maybe I should ask for a refund because they sold me exactly what was stated, but never told me the 2014 would be better.

Well if you’re going to go there, go all the way – With cars you know their is going to be a new model every year, with the tools we had reason to suspect there would be new skins, but no, there was no hint they were going to start fundamentally altering the bargain in the future.

And if they want it to be like cars, then they also get to experience the fun of people deliberately holding off buying. There is no profit in telling people “you’re a fool to buy now” with one hand while the other is waving you over proclaiming “You only have 4 days left – get it now. Now. NOW!”

I can’t tell if they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for sales or if they just deliberately want to cheese off proven customers. There is no good way to spin it that this represents the move of a sensible and thriving storefront. Its burning goodwill to ash for a few quick bucks.

((Shrug)) Its meant to be rare. Mjolnir and Infinite Light say ‘hi’.

gidorah.4960:

should be fine as long as the dev’s pick population imbalance for the next wvw cdi

Yoh.8469:

I believe they have already done a CDI on that topic, a couple of months ago in fact.

It went poorly enough that there was mention of the possibility of taking up the topic again with a more vigorous Host-Dev presence.

I hope we can look at it again.

zamalek.2154:

To me the CDI is a creative process and length limits gets in the way of that; however much of the same type of stuff can be said at times. Additionally there is a lot of noise (“oh your idea is dumb” and such posts) that you need to mentally sift through. That, in my opinion is where the energy is wasted – even through Chrispy can rant on for a while his/her posts are well worded and as consise as they can possibly be (his/her ideas simply take that many words) – they are a pleasure to read and draw inspiration from.

What I would do is quite the contrary to what you suggested. Limit how often people can post on the threads (once every 4 hours or so?) and in addition have a much larger minimum character requirement. In my humble opinion you want to encourage those longer, more thought out posts.

Having a time limit between posts is a function found on these boards known as “flood control”. Its currently used as a punishment for posters who have accumulated infraction points. I don’t know if it can be invoked on a per thread basis rather than on a per account basis, but my experience is that it can have a remarkable impact on sharpening the mind . Its also annoying as hell, but it was a righteous bust so I try not to gripe too much.

While I think flood control has some potential for barring multi-posting on an automated basis, I think we need to carefully consider that CDI threads are predominantly made up of two kinds of posts: proposals and discussion. (I do recognize a third important recurring category of summary – but I think there is already a bit of a push to move those into nearby support threads.)

Flood control of any length would shape Proposal posts, forcing the poster to work in discrete packets, knowing that they cannot claim continuously adjacent posts (except very late at night). However flood control also cripples any sort of immediacy in discussion and fast interplay in critique. It makes it hard to iterate an idea. It may also block summary posting as those sometime have “legitimate” needs to take up 2-3 posts in a row.

Knowing that we have a couple different kinds of activities in the CDI theads, I wonder about players taking their discussion into anther standard thread voluntarily. It demands a higher level of proficiency to link to your new topic/thread, and a willingness to bat something around without the assurance that a Dev or most of the other contributors will ever see it… But it might be useful. I don’t know. Just sort of musing aloud on this one.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I like the idea of the following:

- Include a topic primer (The CDI thread owner will do this)
- Create a template for proposal ideas starting with a ‘User Story’ and then formatted in a similar way to Nike and other’s suggestions I will create this)
- No word limit as the hope is that the new format will help with more concise communication.

I think we need to continue to discuss:

- CDI having its own section in the forum.
- Tech improvements for the CDI forum.
- How we decide the subject of topics ( I am leaning toward the DEVs picking the next round and seeing how that goes)

Chris

Bump

And here we have a fantastic demonstration of how we can use tools already in the forums to cut down on thread bloat:

If the First Post (hopefully to include the Primer) is set to Q/A mode – that post will always be displayed at the top of every page. Further, the moderator gains the ability to nominate one post as the “Answer” which is always displayed as the second post at the top of every page. Nominating the thread owner’s (the Dev-Host ) Proposal post will mean it is displayed near the top of every single page with better visibility and without having to bump posts, unnecessarily contributing to the thread’s length.

(Then its just a matter of Host’s preference to go back and edit a single Proposal post over and over, or to write new ones and move the nomination forward to the most current, or even a mix of both tactics as the mood takes them. Either way, the forum itself automatically displays it where it can do the most good.)

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Good format and process in my experience absolutely do not negatively impact creativity and problem solving.

…This is going to get rather esoteric, isn’t_it ? That’s all right, a Process Evolution thread really does seem like the right place for it.

Yes, structure has its uses. A joke about the limitations of haiku is way more funny when delivered within the limitations of haiku . I can, if pressed, still dance inside a cage, and sometimes the bars provide opportunities I wouldn’t have dancing on an open field. (And there IS a certain camaraderie to be had in all being locked up together …)

On the contrary design within constraints have led to some of the very best ideas I have seen/played.

Absolutely. Recognizing constraints is KEY to practical solutions. There’s a huge difference between “can it be done?” and “should it be done?” and correctly answering the second question take a lot higher degree of awareness of the limitations where the first question is about capabilities.

I’ve just found the most amazing leaps forward come from recognizing when a widely perceived limitation doesn’t actually exist. That makes me extremely hesitant about introducing them artificially where they may not be necessary.

I’d be a lot happier with the ‘player story’ form if its presented as a “if you are in doubt how to proceed, try this.” rather than enshrining it so that the hidden subtext is “Nike, next time you pop one of your ‘Episode Previews’ just don’t, because its going to get deleted. Bad dog, no biscuit.”

It also raises a question of does this sort of formatting need to extend to response and discussion? Or is it only an issue for initial presentation? Where does “fill out Form A” start and stop?

Lilith Ajit.6173:

I guess I don’t understand how format limits creativity.

Look at Shakespearean sonnets, for instance.

Shall we speak of all
the poets and poetry
with only haiku?

And yes, I occasionally frame my comments as iambic pentameter because I think it’s funny to do so, but that doesn’t mean its the only arrow in my quiver .

Format is a tool, and its an excellent tool for elevating the baseline. I just don’t want to see it promoted to being a cage.

I want to be very clear: I support the principles of good presentation over rigid formatting.

I’ve said it before – CDIs are about creating art. When we explore making art, we often need to demonstrate our understanding of art. To illustrate our points, but also to seek critique and review to improve upon it. That requires a degree of freedom. Freedom, in turn, requires a degree of responsibility.

CDI have become possible because the game has had time to teach about the game. Clear formats are an excellent tool for teaching processes, but they cannot be the highest level of contribution we will tolerate. I’ve been infracted for reaching higher before. I don’t want to see good posts being deleted again because they didn’t fit in a box.

You do not foster creativity by enforcing conformity.

ZilentNight.5089:

They should simply allow Dragonite ore to be sold on TP, that will fix all the problems.

And by ‘fix’ you mean reintroduce ‘gold farming and flipping as the best pathways to all possible rewards’.

Its not an accident that you actually have to get out into the world and hit something to get these materials.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Nike.2631:

Rant over.

Sorry that not all of us have multiple hours to read every post in a single thread where every post is an essay.

I’m sorry if you thought my momentary rant was anything other than expressing the desire for posts to be concise, easily absorbed, and better serve people who have limited time to view or contribute.

Yes, I for example have set aside a lot of time to provide volunteer assistance in these threads. While I throw ideas out, I also spend hours in dialogue with fellow posters, either encouraging them or trying to provide constructive criticism that challenges them to make their offering better. I am not alone in this, and I’m glad to see others trying to talk with their peers. I want the process to be inclusive. I don’t go around stomping on people’s faces trying to drive them away so that I can lord it over the CDI process.

One thing that concerns me is the threads have consistently grown so long that they scare people off. I hope we can get a change in process/format that helps make the CDIs less scary to people. Its going to take improvement along a couple of fronts and while the structural changes are in Host-Dev’s hands, we can also do a better job of making reading those pages and pages of posts a more entertaining, rewarding, and brief undertaking.

The Host-Dev is reading the entire thread. Any player who does that too is automatically going to have a leg up on being in tune with the Host Dev and an edge in writing posts that resonate for them. That is unavoidable. So lets make that barrier to entry as small as we can .

Lasica.5068:

BobbyStein.2315:

Funny that you mention player voice. I’ve had a few meetings recently about that. I can’t go into details but I will say that it’s on the list of things we’re looking to address. The current issue is more of a tech one and less of a “we don’t want the player to talk” decision.

I would personally prefer not to have my characters speak because then I can imagine my own voice for them.

A lot of skipping scenes during the Personal Story then?

I just have to say it:

TL;DR… Have people gone bat-droppings CRAZY?

What are they teaching in schools now that after you go to the trouble of boiling your entire screed down to a couple of one-line statements that encompass your complete thought in stand-alone easy-reading form… you then BURY IT at the absolute back end of your post?

If you can deliver your core thought in a couple of one-liners *&(#$^!@ LEAD WITH THAT. Make those points when people are still extending you the courtesy of their polite attention rather than assuming their eyes glazed over and hoping you can pick them up at the end when they are more likely to have gotten up and fixed themselves a sandwich than they are to be still scrolling down past a wall of blather.

Rant over.

Vox Hollow.2736:

@Nike

I think Viable and Competitive are the same thing.

We use Viable here as some kind of weird synonym for ‘functional’. But how I’ve seen it described is more like ‘one of the options in a meaningful choice’.

So, the stuff people have debates over? Probably Viable. The stuff you can kind of dismiss out of hand without a second thought? Not Viable, even if it can complete the content.

The thing is ‘viable’ gets thrown around like its some gold standard, when a lot of people log in and run around in set ups that PvPs would describe as “not even viable”… and yet they’re having fun and are generally satisfied customers. That’s alive. That’s functional. Its just not competitive. It does a disservice to how much of the game works adequately.

Using a better word for the standard being sought – for professions to have more variety in their competitive builds, to have more competitive skills and competitive traits helps better frame the discussion. It better evokes the existence of a spectrum of performance levels rather than trying to create binary states of ALIVE/DEAD.

Binary states do a very poor job of telling you how big or small an adjustment needs to be to move something into the desired performance range.

Karl McLain.5604:

As far as the ‘Offhand Empty’ skills go, these abilities were designed for new characters that have yet to gain an off-hand weapon and I wouldn’t count on these sets being changed anytime soon. Thanks for the suggestion though!

As an alternative, consider~

You could add new off hand weapons choices (mace for example) that only fill the #4 and #5 slot and leave the #3 slot as the off hand skill available now.

BobbyStein.2315:

Funny that you mention player voice. I’ve had a few meetings recently about that. I can’t go into details but I will say that it’s on the list of things we’re looking to address. The current issue is more of a tech one and less of a “we don’t want the player to talk” decision.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I would expect it’s also a budgetary one to get those voice actors (all 10 or so) back for just that.

Its a LOT more than that. 10 actors for every language the game has been released in.

I don’t discount the cost and I wouldn’t begrudge them carefully managed repurposing of existing audio stocks. I just want for the endgame of a year-long world shaking tale to not come off as cheap.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is in a similar bind with a cast of fully voiced heroes, and it suffered terribly from “major events” that were completely ludicrous in their handling of the resounding silence of the heroes after launch. I’m a bit traumatized by it, really. It was bad.

BobbyStein.2315:

Disclosure: 1/10,000 is hyperbole.

I actually considered setting up some sort of search pattern that discarded any theory put forward in more that 8 posts .

But I get where folks are coming from, and this feedback has been noted. I think we can drop more hints along the way without spoiling too much in the future.

My own experiences with unfolding storylines as both a table-top GM and a professional writer are that while it can be a little disappointing to have your secrets ferreted out more quickly than you expected, you can always console yourself with the knowledge that you’ve been communicating with your audience successfully – they followed the breadcrumb trail diligently and eagerly . And ultimately their fun in discovery is more important than your own in fooling them.

I’ve said harsh things about the early part of the Scarlet arc and I stand by them as being true of that time. But the last 2-3 episodes have shown dramatic growth. The recaps have be entertaining and well delivered. Scarlet has become more compelling and more frightening. I feel more involved in the story from within the game rather than chasing after supplementary texts. I am genuinely hopeful that the climax will achieve something we talk about with fond remembrance in years to come. I do want to be able to tell my friends, “It had a rough start, but look how far they’ve come.”

Karl McLain.5604:

Runes:

• Rune sets will receive a general balance pass to bring them in line with each other. This will increase the amount of viable rune options.

The English language called and suggested the word you might be looking for every time “viable” gets thrown around incorrectly in these parts is “competitive”.

Viable – as in ‘alive’ – is a standard pretty much achieved if loading up a particular set of traits/gear/what-have-you doesn’t cause the game to crash.

Nearly all builds are viable – only a handful are competitive.

Mikuchan.7261:

You can’t think that I think that you’re endorsing such a limitation

I would never think that you would ponder that they would consider that we would contemplate that anyone would imagine that… wait, wuut? _

If any of your books have pages and an index, that’s exactly how books do it
Just instead of clicking a button to get to read what you want, you have to navigate to the right page number.

An intriguing comparison. I just don’t generally start a book I’m reading or writing with the index .

However.. Based on experimentation..
They seem to havechanged the way spoilers work.
Making the argument obsolete.

Ooo. Good experiment .

((adds new arrow to the quiver))

I just purchased my first commanders tag two nights ago and have been directing homeland security for FA’s borderland when I can. SoS presence has been relentless. Usually not overwhelmingly huge when I’ve been on, but enough that there can be no resting on our PTT laurels.

Great engagements so far. I hope my skills improve to help give you the challenge you came for . Welcome to T2!

BobbyStein.2315:

What people don’t understand is that we wrote and voiced a lot of these moments throughout the year. Some scenes and story instances were cut or never implemented in the final releases, which is why this particular story instance was longer than the typical one and filled with lots of exposition.

I sincerely hope that over course of the year there was an opportunity to get the Hero Voice Actors back into studio and allow the players to be more engaged in the climax of the arc than as mute witnesses.

Scavenge some clips from the existing Personal Story library if you have to, but please don’t leave us completely silent in the face of these world altering events!

BobbyStein.2315:

That’s not really true. There’s a lot of information in the game, but it’s been spread across multiple releases. If anything, the theorycrafting on Scarlet that I’ve seen on these forums and on Reddit are fantastic. We’re lucky to have a really smart fanbase that is connecting the dots. That’s not to say everyone is right—there’s probably one accurate guess out of a thousand. We want to get people talking and guessing.

“One out of ten thousand” was also mentioned publicly… Thing is, having a sub-one-percent success rate actually points to not connecting to your audience very effectively. More than 99% of your active and engaged audience just don’t get it.

You may be over-doing the mystery/twist a bit .

Mikuchan.7261:

You can’t write everything in one sentence.

You can’t think I’m endorsing such a limitation .

That’s how you write an instruction manual, a scientific report, a book or whatever you want.

I don’t own any books that do that. It may be a way of organizing your thoughts, but its not how final presentation works in any medium except this one. And good presentation defeats the need for it in the first place.

Furthermore, spoilers don’t increase the page length. They just decrease the length you need to scroll to get past them.

People aren’t coming in and saying “it took me too long to scroll down…” They’re saying “This thread is over 20 pages so I didn’t even look at those pages…”

Spoiler tagging has no impact on the actual barrier to entry we’re seeing.

I see no problem with them, rather the contrary.
Very good for structuring your post and make it easilly navigateable.

My friend who does website design never fails to regale me with tales of how adding even one more click than you have to is attention that you’ve lost. If the 1-3 sentences preceding a spoiler tag are sound enough to make me want to read more, I’d read it on the open page just fine – and if they aren’t why would I open the spoiler to follow it further?

As a <duck>, I want <it to rain> so that <I can laugh because everyone but me is all soggy>.

I usually post my larger offering framed as “previews for upcoming releases” – those have a pretty definite format. I’ve always been surprised only one other person has done that that I’m aware of. Its how ArenaNet presents these kinds of ideas, it should resonate for them~

RELEASE TITLE
“Quote” from in-game character

Brief Introduction

BANNER TITLE
Core concepts

ENTICING TITLE
Follow-on Details

((personal comments here were warranted))

Mikuchan.7261:

1: Teach people to use spoilers to make posts more manageable. That is, have a template with a TL;DR section and spoilers for different parts of the text. Then you can read what you think seems interesting and skip what doesn’t apply to you.

Honestly, the moment I see spoiler tags I move on to the next post – if you can’t fit your thoughts on the page, folding the paper over them is NOT a replacement for taking the time to make an editorial pass for brevity.

Its unfair, I’m sure, but to me it’s tantamount to recognizing your post has a problem with length and then refusing to actually fix it.

2: Voting seems the most fair and shows you what the players think is an issue. You can also start CDIs about relevant stuff spontaneously, like the gem store, due to recent events.

Voting and most other highly formulaic, rigidly formatted input seems like poll/survey fodder to me. Something that if managed gracefully could be extended to encompass a lot more of the playerbase than just the forumites .

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I wanted to stop by and say thanks for the feedback. We do feel that the celestial stat set will be hit the hardest with the upcoming critical damage changes, so we are looking at possibly boosting the overall stats by a small amount.

Also the celestial stat set in PvP is using a much lower stat multipliers than the PvE versions so we will be looking at changing this as well. Nothing is set in stone, but I wanted to let guys know this is something we are discussing.

What might be a better ‘2 moas with one stone’ solution is to FIX the Giver’s armor by turning Boon Duration into a stat rather than a percent value (same fix as crit magnitude → Ferocity) and then add that stat to Celestial.

… I have two Norn Guardians AND two Human ones.

Fungalfoot.7213:

Just avoid the gem shop in the future. You learned your lesson, yes?

Its certainly the lesson they’re trying to teach.

Ignore players and they’ll go away? True dat.

The refunds are available because people bought multiple picks back when they did say “Soulbound on use”. Now they say “Account bound” and you can return duplicates. Not every single one – just your duplicates.

I’d like it more If I hadn’t already spent 90$ on unlimited picks.

Seriously, if I was just starting out it’d be a great deal.

But for this proven customer it’s really just an irritant.

Shakkara.2641:

Anet FORCES people because they release a new, more powerful version, making the old one useless.

Misusing the word “useless” in not helping our case.

The molten pick still has the utility I bought it for. Nothing has changed there.

The question is how well ArenaNet wants to get on with early adopters. If the new pick had cost more, I wouldn’t be terribly put out. But with my current pick carrying the same price for less benefit means that they might as well never put the molten pick up for sale ever again. They also tell me “Igonore our high pressure sales techniques – we’ll cave and give you a better deal for spending $20 in a year than spending $20 right now”

You should never incentivize not buying. And that’s what the Sprocket-Pick does. It makes people suspicious of everything and should they wait rather than spend?

Ayrilana.1396:

You’re missing one small detail. People bought multiple picks because they were soulbound. When it was made account bound, this made having them on multiple characters pointless as you could transfer a single one across characters now. That’s not the same of an additional feature.

I’m not forgetting anything. A return is a return. You could turn right back around and buy the same pick if you like. They’ve never restricted how you spend the gems, only that you have at least one of the original items left – if you have 2 molten-picks, you may only return 1.

DarcShriek.5829:

You paid 800 gems for it. The new one costs 1000. You’ll get no refund.

You can exchange the 800 one for the 1000 one at the black Lion trader. You can return duplicates if you have more than one because the changed functionality meant there was little reason to ever buy more than one. What you do with those gems is up to you.

Ayrilana.1396:

Healing power? Really?

Yes. really. If you’ve any sort of Support-minded outlook in character-building, its the first time we’ve had Power-based DPS and Support without points being piddled away on Toughness in a single combination outside of Celestial.

I realize Support is still dead in high-skill Dungeon running, but its solid for bringing stability and success to weaker PUGs (like say, the marionette…) and it can make a huge difference in WvW clashes.

Those sets are no different than clerics in terms of usefulness except for like two classes with very specific builds.

Sometimes the tools have to be there before anyone employs a little imagination in using them. If ALL you do is DPS, then sure, its unexciting. But I think there are more than just two builds that can leverage Healing power over the reduced impact of Ferocity…

I still think we need to see a Primer in the first post of each thread (with the rules of engagement in the second post). The Host-Dev can use the first post as a platform to help us understand the topic at hand and give us a little common language/jargon to discuss it with.

In Chris’ interview, one thing that was mentioned that I think is incredibly important: CDIs work better now than they would have before launch because the player base is better educated about the game. We can make examples based on things we’ve actually seen and played through on the live servers. Its very true, but we’re also self-taught for the most part. The Host-Dev could do a lot to expand our education and elevate the entire discussion with just a little effort right at the outset through a good Primer.

Yes, yes it is.

Technical question about your forum software:

Any idea if its possible for a thread to be displayed in two places?

Would it be possible for a single “CDI – WvW: Handicapping for competitive matches between uneven populations” thread to be made visible in BOTH the WvW board and a dedicated CDI board?

Lilith Ajit.6173:

The suggestions forum was axed so that developers could get the relevant information in their own sub forums, not because players and non anet forumers couldn’t wade through it.

The problem is symmetrical – Devs couldn’t be reasonably expected to look in two forums for matters of importance to them. Player’s shouldn’t be forced to look in two forums to find the most important threads about WvW for example. A WvW CDI belongs in the WvW board where WvW players will find it without checking an arcane schedule over when WvW is active in the CDI boards.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I like this a lot- we can start with a broad topic like Horizontal Development was and as soon as it becomes more focused split it into separate CDI threads.

Would the expectation be that the split topics are parked and then tackled in order or that they are running together. Because if it is the latter then I can say without question that I personally wouldn’t have time to engage appropriately on more than one thread at a time.

I think calving off new threads as a way of formalizing topic shifts is promising. The question is do you lock the original thread on your way out? Right now the power of CDIs for me is in the social contract “Every post gets read by the hosting Dev”. If a thread loses focus to a branch, is it fair to leave it open, collecting “I just arrived and here’s what I think” posts that won’t actually be read by a Dev? I fear that may poison the process. Do we go with a grace period? “New CDI thread and questions starting [here], this thread will shut down in 36 hours.” Maybe let the new branch thread percolate for a day without Dev response while checking for any stragglers in the trunk for one last day? Or does the thread stay open on the promise a Dev will come back to it? That’s great for inclusiveness, but sometimes the subject really has evolved to the point where responses to post #1 just aren’t relevant anymore…

From experience the magic number is between 20 and 30 pages – after that the thread gets seriously riddled with “I haven’t read it all, but…” Something has to be done around the time the initial thread hits that length.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Tbh the CDI really ought to have its own sub forum.

The suggestions forum was closed because it was moving topics away from the people who needed to see them. We still get “What does CDI even mean?” questions every week. Putting CDIs in a forum where only the well-informed can find them is hiding them from the players they touch on most.

I really am going to giggle at the whole “Sprokets are everywhere” crowd when the Berserker crit bonus → Ferocity nerf hits and people notice how incredibly powerful the Zealot’s/Keeper’s gear actually is.

3,000 for your armor and another 1,000-2,000 for your weapons. They’re going to evaporate like water ice on Mercury.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Welcome back.

The two areas I think we need to work out or improve on are:

1: We need to keep thread and post sizes more manageable. Should we put a limit on the word length of posts?

No.

(If only all answers could be so brief )

The longest responses already circumvent the size limits of the boards by multiple posting. Now you might engage in more active moderation by simply deleting anything past the first post-in-a-series as a way of encouraging brevity, but I think the issue ultimately is the threads are open too long. The problem is more the accumulated volume rather than any one poster’s enthusiasm, and as the CDIs get more established you have to expect more people will participate and they will grow in length even faster than they do now. Total length is the barrier to involvement.

Its also been suggested limiting the number of posts per player over a period of time. I think that’s a play environment that heavily discourages active discussion – the “dropping off my proposal and never coming back” sort is totally unaffected, while people committed to the process of discussion are weighing “do I talk to a fellow player about his ideas or save my handful of responses for my own ideas?”

I will mention I was on 600 second flood control for a while during the last two threads. That certainly inspired a little bit of extra consideration of my once per 10 minutes opportunities, and there was no chance I’d be stringing a series of posts together. Everything had to fit in the limits of a single post. I don’t know if you can set flood control on a per-thread basis instead of per-user, but you might ask the techies about it.

2: How are we going to chose topics moving forward, for example, by votes or by Anet choosing them etc?

My impression is that when a CDI topic or branch of the discussion overlaps with something going on in the offices already, those are the moments we have the greatest chance of making a difference, having an impact. Those kind of tangible results are going to be the best chance for the CDIs to prove their value to players rather than come off as a bit of PR handholding. We’ve had them by chance, so maybe it’s not an issue, but I think those opportunities can be better orchestrated by the Devs pushing forward topics on which they can actually take action in a timely fashion.

That said, ArenaNet really needs to work on some sort of voluntary polling/survey system so they can be better in tune with the pulse of their audience. Consider a weekly brief survey that credits your account with 5 gems or something. Fill out 5 surveys and get a black Lion Key mailed to your account. People want to tell you about their experience, more than just those of us on the boards. Gathering information like that could help you choose your CDI topics in a way that reassures people that their concerns outside the pet-project of the month have been heard.

You don’t need to press anything. Its automatic. However, like button 4 its interrupted by being attacked, so its only useful if there is something/someone able to pull agro off you. Generally I find bobbing for a heal, then swimming away just under the surface after being struck, then bobbing for a heal will let me work my way beyond the leash distance of almost anything in the game.