Proposal to improve communication between CR and the fanbase

It's no secret there's been some tension between Arenanet's CR staff and the fansites recently. Whatever the cause of it, unhappy CR staff means less reading of the forums by Arenanet, and unhappy fans means more misery for the CR staff. Nobody wins, and the game will ultimately suffer.

So the way I see it, the fans of GW have as much responsibility as Arenanet to try to find solutions to these kinds of problems. Here's my attempt.

I think a major factor in the recent unrest is the perception (justified or not) that the CR reps are not passing on valuable ideas to the people who can evaluate, reject or implement them. It has been stated that the CR reps summarize and pass along fan suggestions in the form of some kind of regular report. If the fans had some kind of confirmation of what suggestions had been passed along, I think that would do wonders for the attitude and morale of the fanbase.

Providing a list of the ideas that have been submitted to the developer teams would provide validation to the community that suggests them. It would say, "your ideas are heard, and are being considered" far louder than those words can say by themselves.

I also propose that developer responses to individual ideas be summarized and added to this list. If an idea will not or cannot be implemented, I think that fans will be prepared to accept this if an attempt is made to explain why. Having an idea disappear without feedback is extremely aggravating. Having an idea rejected with a specific reason for its rejection can be frustrating, but it also allows for revision of the idea into a form that may be acceptable later.

I know this will mean some extra work for the CR team, but I think it would be worth it, for their own sake as well as for the fans. Maintaining a list like this will take some of the heat off of the CR reps. It will mean that when Gaile says "I love the idea, but the devs say no", she'll have the added advantage of being able to back that up to skeptical fans. It makes the devs the bad guys instead of Gaile and the CR team, which will make Gaile's job a bit less gut-wrenching, I do believe.

I propose this list be put on the official wiki. Having a list like this will mean that there is a single place that people can go to see what has already been suggested, what has been rejected by the devs, and (most importantly) the reason it was rejected. That allows suggestions to be refined, and also helps end ceaseless demands for a feature that simply can't be provided. Sure, some people will always demand the impossible, but they can now be dealt with by a simple link to the rejection reason. No doubt many in the community will do this without intervention from Arenanet. It also allows people to see how they need to propose their ideas in order to best make them visible to the CR team; if your idea has come up dozens of times but has not made it onto the list of proposals submitted to the devs, then you know that there's a communication problems somewhere along the line and perhaps you're posting it in the wrong place or in an unclear manner.

If you're having a hard time imagining what I'm talking about (and I know I haven't been terribly clear) I've created mockup of my proposed idea on my User page on the official wiki: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User:MrSmiles

I've put some time and thought into this, and I'd appreciate feedback not just from the community, but from Gaile and the CR team as well. If this is a bad or unworkable idea, I'd like to know why.

Thanks for reading!

You have to remember that with every game there are gamers who will never be satisfied. Even after they payed for the game, get free online play, free updates. They still complain. If they only knew how much work and time gaming companies take to give people these updates.

Personally I am tired of coming here and reading everyone's bs complaints(most of them anyway). Point being, no matter how much they give back to the community, there will always be the constant complaining.

I don't think for a moment that my little proposal is going to eliminate the complaining. I do, however, think that it may be able to cut down on and de-fang some of the more demoralizing complaints and accusations made at the CR team, and I think that would be good for everybody.

There are no perfect solutions, but every little bit helps.

It would be great, but the dev team will never allow itself to be in a position where they can be held accountable by the community. It just won't happen -- no CR rep will let the community see how little they do.

*Mod edit: removed reference to deleted post*

EXAMPLE OF CHANGE AT GURU

a few weeks ago a person registered and asked a noob question about GWEN.

2 years ago i had the top noob questions on my desltop ready for copy/paste for a quick answer and so did a lot of the others here who are now long gone.

i answered the exact same question back then more than 10 times in a day for a newcomer.

WHAT IT IS NOW

that newcomer got a response all right.

most were some version of its already been answered noob to the ones that said read the article noob without giving a link to it.

that new potential forum member has not been back and if i got a greeting like that i would not be back either.

this forum has changed from a generally friendly and welcome FANSITE to a...general whine/bitch fest ground zero where someone who says they like the game or thanks Anet is called a brown nosing fanboy

..........imagine that .........a fan at a fansite....unthinkable

Looks like you put a lot of time into this and I hope it's seen and considered by the CR and ANet

Good Post

i uderstand that you spent alot of timeon the idea, but over all i don't believe it would work as intended...granted for the bigger things such as the SR fiasco, something more then " we're trying a few things" for two months while we were stuck with characters that got smacked down by a bug 40% of the time - would have eased the tensions in there;

an overall list of every idea is a bad idea.

first off, idea's flow through these pages bout once every 10 minutes from 12 year old tiny tim who want's to see what's under his monk's undies, to joe " i play drunk and want an icon to let people know i'm wasted" smith... most of them are not worth mentioning. so you now have people that put out bad idea's pissed because their idea didn't make the list.

then you have the ones the CR people thought were good enough to put on the list, now you've got jimmy, new SR Skill, jamesson all excited the devs are going to consider his idea for a new skill - but, like the majortiy of ideas that will get on the list, it gets rejected - now he and everyone else are pissed that they got rejected.

if a reason for the rejection's is included, wether it's because of balance, or they are just not adding more skills, or whatever - you'll have all those people fueling thread after thread about reasons why the resons they were given are wron.

consider that every day there's at least 3 people on this board alone with the "great" idea for an in game auction house.. - it stands to reason that the devs have seen this idea come accross their desk more then once already - and for whatever reason they have rejected (personaly i rejct it as well) it... now you each and every single one of those people with hurt fealings, pissed at the devs, and wanting to vent that their precious idea was rejected.

as someone who's passed idea's in many aspects of life to many people, i know from experience for every one idea you have that is implimented and appreciated by everyone it affects - you have hundreds that are total crap - but when those get rejected, they still piss you off as much as when you're greatest idea ever is rejected. i would stan to wager that there has been a ball of emotion brewing up inside you as you've read my response, even though i've tried not to be antaganistic in it.


all of this without even considering that they would be so swamped with stuff to reply too, they'ld spend every day talking at us, and we'ld all get pissed because they'ld have no time to maintain the game.

It is so nice to see constructive posts, nice job!

Did they tell us that they could not increase the string length in the party window? I missed that one...seemed like such an easy fix

This is exactly what I said in the other thread. Your mock up is excellent. Gaile reads these forums all the time so I hope she sees this.

Communication, empathy, understanding and free information for all!

Good on you

Edit-------

Ah, I see you read my post

I agree. I just want a list of what ideas the CR team have passed on to the dev team.

Granted. But which is worse? Knowing your idea got rejected and why? Or just watching them disappear into a black hole, which is pretty much what happens now?

Yes. And now we can refer them to the list of ideas that have been passed along and rejected. Anything to cut down on the redundant ideas would be a plus.

I think this is a good idea, in theory, but I work in an office and when I read that I picture myself having to write endless summaries and reports and lists and every week and I know I would be thinking, "Oh my god, more stuff to do before I can get to the REAL work."

I feel tired just looking at that suggestion.

Wow ... this is amazing!

I had a look through it, and it looks quite good, actually. But stop making fun of Izzy; we like him! (well I do, but the number of complaints he gets about this skill and that... poor Izzy!)
(Izzy is is Isaiah Cartwright, who's in charge of skill balancing)

Anywayz ... Yay Verteiron!

that is a good question, and right here is the example of why a black hole is better.... if they start telling people that they considered and rejected their idea, and the reason why, people are going to reject that reasoning and try to come up with an explination, or situation that they think the people rejecting their idea didn't already consider... then the response comes back, we considered that, and still decide aginst it... and another round of trying to create an argument to convince them - and it just coninutes to spiral until the resons aginst the arguments dry up and then the origional poster gets pissed because all of his attempts to convince them were rejected over and over and then just stopped all together...

just as you attempted to reason with me, useing an argument that i already considered and basicly covered with my inital post.

it's nothing aginst you, or people who would be posting their ideas - it's just basic human nature.

In my opinion, don't waste your breathe. I love reading all new ideas and suggestions to better Guild Wars and everything about it, such as this, however, I don't see the purpose in taking the time to write all this out when you know it won't happen.

But, if hell does freeze over, this idea would be awesome to see.

Actually it turns out (according to Gaile) that the developers read the forums directly already.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...9&postcount=82

So the problem is not that the CR team isn't passing information along. Nevertheless, a -centralized- location for feedback on at least some of the ideas brought forward by the community would be a step in the right direction.

I think I read this in one of Gaile's posts or chats, but... well, that's more or less the point. I don't know where that was posted and there's no place I can go to find out for certain. I can scour the Dev Tracker forum, I suppose. Seems like there should be an easier way.

@WildmouseX - you raise a good point, and I see exactly where you're coming from. We'll just have to wait and see what everyone else thinks. After all, you're basing your statements on your personal opinion as well

that's all anyone ever has, in any situation.

I think another alternative (but not mutually exclusive) idea could be for some kind of CR blog to be opened up, where they would be able to take comments from the community pretty much directly, and have their own control over the trolls and haters.

I think this is a good idea, too, but I'm trying to introduce the simplest (read: easiest to implement) method that I think will make a difference as a (possible) starting point for the CR team to consider.