Why is ANet asking the community now?

Gaile has asked us for many opinions on skill hunter title(s), In-Game Store Items, best weekend events, PvP Balancing, new minis etc.

What happened?

Out of the blue they started asking us our opinions.

I mean, its great! But what event caused this? Were they afriad they were losing some players?

Your guess is as good as mine.

They've ALWAYS listened to feedback. There were plenty of improvements to GW due to them listening to that same feedback. It's nothing new. And it's not some desperate measure to keep customers the way you're inferring.

I know they've listened to feedback, but they have never directly asked the community before (I think).

The only reason I mentioned the "fear of player loss" was because they started asking these questions soon after the AoE change, and many threatened to leave.

Because... they... want to be... nice? Ummm, let's see. They need ideas... possibly? Ermm, they enjoy conspiracy theories we cook up so they can laugh at us? They... have to give a status report... and using player comments gives them 1/2 their writing... less work yeah! Hmm, what else can I come up with. They need "filler" to prove to the community they are still working on Guild Wars The Original. Uhhh, they like to give us discussion topics. Hrmm... it's great publicity and gives us opinionated people 'warmy fuzzy' feelings to type out our long essays.

Whew, okay all I could think of.

My guess is Gaile woke up one day and a thought smacked her upside the head. She then quickly contacted a group of higher-ups and discussed the idea of posting questions and polls on the websites instead of just passively responding to community output. They all said "Brilliant!", and it was done.

After all, her and Alex Weekes are Community Relations. Their job is to "listen" to community feedback and relay any news from the devs or cooldown any upsetting flames that arise. I honestly think that they never considered actively starting discussions on ideas or solutions to problems. It's a wise idea, IMO.

The real question is why didn't they start after 3 months of release date?

To show that they're listening so people will buy Guild Wars 2 thinking we'll have the same community voice?

That'd be too obvious plus then they'd have to keep doing it or else the fans will suspect something.

im happy with Gaile finally asking for our opinion, but i dont think we're gona hear anything like:

do you think a/e farming (just an example) is ruining the economy?
i think ANet will continue to nerf anything they wish.. whether the players like it or not.

ANet: whats that? you think a/e farming is good?
player: yes, I think it give people both a chance to make money and a chance to get things they want without having to spend 3 days trying to find a seller
ANet: I'm sorry.. I wasn't listening at all.... *zap* Update:3/30/07 : Shadow Form can no longer be used in conjuction with any other enchantments!BWAHAHAHAHA

That's the problem, they ALWAYS listen to feedback. They ONLY listen to feedback, and not the general suggestions, or else we would have the ability to walk at will, and a larger storage, and other things that are craved by the community.

Ok, you guys are just dying for a new conspiracy theory, I can feel it in my bones. Polls do not take the place of suggestions, or bug reports, or other means of communication, which we also attend to. But polls are often the offshoot of suggestions, and regardless of their source, they are very helpful to us.

What happened was simply a natural progression. Instead of gathering feedback from many threads, I thought it would be more efficient to put up a poll or a single thread to focus the feedback. (We continue to track the broader threads, as well.) Consider that there might be 10 or 20 mentions a day of ideas for the 2nd birthday gift, but they might be in 10 different threads. During some days, 50 opinions might be expressed about party size for Heroes' Ascent, but again, those opinions might appear in various threads. Data is really valuable, and with a Dev Poll thread, we can get the info we need--your opinions--very clearly and show "Here are the preferences of the community, as expressed on Guild Wars Guru, as far as [this subject]."

I think one of the first Dev Polls (before I called them Dev Polls) was for the Guild Wars Official (on-line) store, and it started back in July of last year, so this process isn't exactly new. Over time, we have found the polls more and more helpful. In fact, in the last week we spent quite a bit of time gathering data from two different polls to share with various teams. (The online store thread was difficult because it wasn't a "choose one" listing, but random posts. Good feedback, but time consuming to digest!)

The current poll--about Weekend Events--is going to help us map out upcoming weekends, and the designers were really pleased at the idea of hearing from you. I believe that our various CCs have posted the poll in non-English forums as well. Come early next week, we hope to gather all the feedback from the various player groups and create a spreadsheet to send over to the Design Team.

I do admit the notion of polls is growing. I hope you don't mind! Polls are so very valuable to us. (In fact, I have two more I want to start up very soon!) My hope is that everyone will take the time to vote or to share a few words. The more information and input we get, the better that Guild Wars will be.

I say it's "Too little, too late" for this player. I've dusted off my EQ account and am going back to a game that did it right. 15 expansions and almost 10 years of life with no sign of kicking anytime soon. I'll check out GWEN and if it's anything like the hype. I'll dust off my GW account. Play until beta for GW2 then try that. I highly doubt I'll stay around for GW2.

The "community relations" on GW1 was bad enough. Too many Skill balances and weekend events, not enough "Sorrows Furnace" or serious needed (more storage, bigger friends/ignore list, auction house) updates.

EQ1 was out for well over 5+ years before EQ2 was ever thought of. Why is it GW1 is less then 2 years old and we already need a GW2? Granted GW1 is broken in some places, but they could be fixed. Fix ver. 1.0 before trying to sell ver 2.0

Best of luck to all of you that stick around for the haul.


Edit: Sorry but the Razah thing just burned me too much. That and it takes forever for anything to go live. They get a poll and its months before we hear anything about said poll.

i have no idea,
maybe the first one was out of the blue, (ALL SPECULATION) there could have been a discussion at arenanet, weither the skill hunter should be changed or not... (maybe with the fact in the back of the head that there would be no next chapter, just an exp, and that they should make skill hunter sort of final..)
thus 1 dev at arenanet said, now what do the players want.
then they all agreed to try and make polls and discussions about it.

and maybe the first one was evaluated as a good thing and they decided to do this more, consult the players to see what they prefer among the possible options.

not that everything you say in such a topic will be implemented, but that everything you suggest will be evaluated and seen if it somewhere has a benefit to put that in the game (of course looking at technical issues too, develop time, dev cost, implementing x might have influence on feature y and z, ...)

*edit*
ok i missed gaile posting inhere, i was typing my own msg to long lol
but its almost as i said, only i took the skillhunter as an example though it might have started with another issue/feature.
its just to help out the people following the community, make the data more centralised instead of scattered around in dozens of threads.

The only problem is that some people seem to think Anet and its employees are magic fairies that can wave magic wands and make things happen instantly, but in reality they are a business and have real world limitations.

See, Bloodrose, that's the nice thing. You can take a break and come back, if and when you choose. You don't feel you have to play a certain number of hours to "get your money's worth" or that if you decide to leave, you'll risk losing your levels or your items or your characters. Step away as you desire, and your account--characters, levels, titles, items--will be here waiting for you when you choose to come back.

And just think -- in the meantime, you're not "renting your space" with a monthly fee.

You mean Gaile is not a Magic Fairie with a magic wand?!?! LIES!

They're asking for opinions to make all of you little GW puppets think that you've actually got a voice in how they pull your little strings. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Seriously though, I can think of several reasons why they began asking for opinions:

1. In the case of the Skill Hunter title track, it was the community that expressed its displeasure at not being able to max the title. A-Net Offered a solution and wanted to see where we, as a community stood on the issue. (We want it, so what's the hold up now?)

2. In the case of Special events, there's only a relatively few people at A-Net with ideas for these things. Why not ask your fan base for ideas to keep the special weekends fresh and interesting?

3. In the case of skill balances, the more people involved with testing changes, the better. Either that's something that it took a while to leearn, or something that took them a while to figure out how to do.

Anet could just put the polls on the log-in screen, forcing people to answer before being able to pick a character to play.

I'm not?
*reluctantly puts away pixie dust*


No, no, we want them to be voluntary and fun! I have a request in to the Web Team and they tell me that we may be able to start doing polls on our website in the future. But for now, I really like the way things are going and I know we're getting a great deal of useful and helpful information from your participation in the polls.

Yes, that's true. There are limitations on how much we can do at any given time, but at any given time, we're doing quite a bit. Consider the current timeframe:

• Allowing the replacement of Heroes' pets (last week)
• Changes to acquisition of Razah (coming soon)
• Updates to the maps and mechanics of Heroes' Ascent (ongoing)
• The addition of automated tournaments (coming soon)
• Pet control improvements (in testing)
• More ladders (coming soon)
• Hard Mode (coming soon)
• Discussions about PvE mesmers, bow skills, and a ton more.

I think when you look at that, it's a pretty impressive list, don't you agree?

Yes good thing you aren't doing PvP because then when you decide to come back you would have to buy the expansions to keep up with the current meta. Or if you left a game with a monthly fee you wouldn't pay for those particuliar months that you were away, that would be just foolish.

I think it's great that Anet value our opinions. They could make the game they way they want and tell us to bugger off (not very good business I know, but there are plenty of games out there developed this way). I think we're at the point now where the community knows so much about the way the game works and can be improved that it'd be crazy not to use this pool of knowledge.

Gasp! Bow skill changes on "The List"! Yay! *does the happy dance*

Ok so Anet may not give us everything we want but hey the World isnt perfect I think they do a great job of keeping up with what the players really want, sure ok everyone wants more storage but since everyone has pretty much got around that issue anyways It allows Anet to concentrate on more fun things like Events . I always look forwards to the next updates, be they big or little, its part of the charm in gw you never know whats just around the corner. So Thumbs up to Anet for Caring and attempting to keep most people happy.

Gaile, the list of improvements "incoming" is indeed impressive, it's just the fact that the timeframe is "coming soon" or "ongoing" that's the problem for most people! "

I understand why you guys prefer it this way instead of announcing a more specific timeframe. Imagine the the update would be delayed and the amount of people screaming ANet betrayed them. Just look at the weekend events that start a few hours later than announced.

So, while it would be nice to have a timeframe like "in two weeks" or "in April", I can totally see why you prefer "soon".

I don't think we should question it, I think we should thank Anet for it and try hard to help them, like I think we do!

... Aren't they reading the BB at all ?????

I think it's more than time repairing what is broken instead of still adding things that most of the players don't care about...

Just my 2 cents...

Why not have a poll NPC in Lions Arch, Kaeining Centre and Kamadam?

Then those that are interested could visit regularly and vote, and Gaile and the Devs could change him / her regularly? Even could be worded so it doesn't spoil the universe (a priest of the gods or something)

Then have a poll update news item on the main page or similar for the fan sites to update from?

The scribe could even feedback on polls?

Just suprised that people are complaining that Anet is now directly asking for feedback and suggestions - surely its a good thing?

There are no more expansions, except GW:EN, and that's less than $50. That's the price you have to pay to be competitive in PvP. if you do low level, you don't need ALL of the skills, just most anyways.

Gaile, this is a somewhat important question. Is the Skill Hunter title going to change at all? That poll on the forum has been around for ages.

Now if we could only make a sticky on the Partition area about such limitations

It could be the fact that they have changed their story from...

"Releasing a new expansion every 6 months" to...

"One last expansion and then a whole new game".

..and their worried about the negative responses (not from me, I dont mind). So now they hype up the PR and start asking what we want changed and improved more frequently. They want to keep us happy and make the game perfect.

It could also just be because they want to start concentrating on GW2 and want all the problems ioned out of GW1 by asking us what we want.

Anet reads these forums. Anet listens to what we say.

Do you ever check some of the times Gaile posts? Its certainly at late hours, even for her. I wouldnt be surprised if she reads the forums at home.

Wether some of what we say is valid and should be implemented is a wholly different concept altogether....

As for the Dev polls, its much easier / efficient way to gather information at one source than multiple sources. Certainly more proactive than reactive.

I know they are reading... But still... I can't figure out that they read the SAME forum as us.

Maybe just... wait and see...

Some people believe their posts are reasonable, when in fact, their posts are not.
Some people think things they find important are important, when in fact, they are not.
Some people think the world revolves around them, when in fact, it does not.

So whats my point?

Just because you post it, just because Anet reads it, doesn't mean it matters.

LyraSMASH!!

....

so, who is going to judge who is important and reasonable and who is not?

Gaile has already answered the OP's question. Does this need to go on?

Gaile,

This is a HUGE mistake, you are getting a very narrow view of what the players want. As popular as we'd like to think this site is, most will not answer polls here because the fear flaming etc. Your main source of input here is from trolls and board dwellers. They hardly can speak for the entire gw gaming world.

I'm of the opinion the request for input is merely an attempt at playcating us into thinking we have a say. It's a PR move to give the appearance of concern so the gaming world at large thinks you really care. Too many concerns have been voiced here and ignored to think otherwise.

I'm sorry, I'm not some starry eyed kid that thinks companies are as they appear. I know all to well if the rev's do not increase gw will go the way of the dodo. The common thought by most online gaming companies seems to be, make as much as you can then move on. Judging from financial reports lineage is not doing as well as it once did, so no doubt there is a push to make gw more viable. Hopefully they get it right.

Some may think I'm being a hard a.., but I simply refuse to accept cute remarks and failed attempts at being cool, to take the place of actual, genuine, interest and concern.

That said I also acknowledge you have a set agenda and can only speak on subjects preapproved by your superiors. Your role is PR, which as some will agree is spin control. Your job is to put a positive spin on all things GW.

If there is an aire of true concern then read thru the posts, you will see several repeated concerns.

1) Better loot
2) More indepth content
3) Anything to reduce the rampant boredom now growing within game.
4) Make all missions doable by any level of player, not just the uber ones.

Case in point, GOA, 90% of the people that make it that far have zero chance of doing any of the missions, either by not being a strong player or because they do not have cookie cutter builds. GW knew this with Prophecies, then saw it in Factions and still insited on making some missions some unbeleiveably hard only the hard core gamers could even dream of finishing them. And please don't say they made it that far they must have talent. They can pay their way there, and yes pay to complete the GOA mssions, but with that in mind, what's the point? Was hiring runners the main idea when these mission were made so hard? Does gw really not care, and just think "You suck stop whinning"?

Where was GW's concern when they were planned out? Or is GW satisfied with reduced numbers of active players?

Surely Skill Hunter changes are on that list too? Or is that canceled since CH4 will allow us to max that anyway?

Fear flaming? Why would anyone avoid a poll simply because of that?