Party Search Feedback

Templates were also impossible, so were reconnects, pay-for-UAX and party search- but they're in the game because people asked for them.

Very simply: party search isn't good right now, it's harder to use the "better feature" to communicate enough useful info for trade or to describe what you need out of a party member. This makes the feature a worse option than spamming districts for all but the simplest of things. Don't get me wrong: for something very simple "GLF MONK" it's good - but for "Looking for vanq partner who can run the following hero bars: LoD/Infuse, 2x SF" it just doesn't work. Seriously, try to fit that sentence into the party search and see how much info you can convey, try it.

As far as trade, right now party search is generating more trade spam. People have their for sale message truncated to something useless and then spam the item again with a modified tag line. Party search also issues cross-district spam when an item is added. This doesn't really help me much:

The real irony here is that ArenaNet is obviously trying very hard to make the game better but disregarding the feedback that would enable them to do so more effectively. People have been asking for improvement to this feature since it was rolled out and no one has taken the time to talk to the community about it or act on the recommendations, do you guys really think that we're just complaining about this for nothing? We're asking about improvement to the feature because it's not very useful to us right now.

Here's a constructive suggestion to squeeze more out of what's there right now:

Add a new column for trade listings, Buy or Sell (color code each word, say buy = blue and sell = red, so you can tell the listings apart at a glance). If something is put into the party search trade section by someone shouting WTS then file it under sell - if it's a WTB then file it under buy. WTT, leave blank or something - make it distinct though and don't lump it in with something else.

Here's what you get out of this: you free up 4 characters and it's now possible to tell at a glance which type of transaction each person is looking for.

And, as always, more characters - but hey, that's impossible like reconnects and UAX right?

I just want to say, nice try Anet. Great idea, implemented very poorly. The intention was good and commendable, but really, just keep trying. More characters in PS or no forced messages to PS (maybe have them appear in chat & PS, rather than just the PS).

That post has a very confrontative tone.

I do work for a commercial software vendor. Our policy when we mistakenly release a bugged feature - especially one that our users will go to lengths to avoid using - is to apologize in a very humble manner and then proceed to do an emergency rollback.

If we get enraged customers on the phone (this happens, just like bugs and broken features will happen), we will attempt to mollify them. We will tell them that we are very sorry and that we will rectify the problem that has upset them at the earliest possible time. When that time is depends on our schedule and in some cases, it'll never come. If at all possible, we try to give them a time estimate on when the fix will occur (non-critical bugs are fixed in regularly scheduled maintenance releases announced well beforehand).

That is how my employer handles customers that we want to buy our next product. Apparently ANet has a different strategy. I'm not saying it's unsuccessful - ANet has a crapload more customers than we can ever hope to have - but it certainly is different.

About the trade/party update, I think that the idea is excellent. The implementation of the feature is not very good though. Dropping the chat window truncation will suffice to make the "crossposting" feature invisible to those not watching the trade/party window.

Personally, I'm not really affected by the change, being that I never sell anything and only ever party with my guildies

Come on, man, just because that's what someone needs to do doesn't mean they present it in such a fashion.

I'll tell you a little story. Once upon a time, before changing careers, I successfully managed a lending office for a Fortune 50 company. I was told by management to get out there and sell like no one has ever sold before in no uncertain terms.

Did I then go to my customers and say BUY MY PRODUCTS? No, I did not. I carefully persuaded them why it was in their own best interests to pursue our products, while admitting my own interests if asked (it doesn't pay to be out-and-out dishonest in sales).

Generally speaking, responsibilities and accountabilities are much clearer than the proper solution strategies for achieving those responsibilities. As a rule, it's best to communicate only the responsibilities to folks and let them figure out how to solve the problem for themselves. One trains them on how in general to solve problems, and then one lets them figure out for themselves the solutions for individual cases. (Intervening when necessary, of course.)

I don't know which thread get's more attention so I'll post this in my thread and in this one. Although the flaming is pretty hot in hur. :P

Ok I was thinking how we could solve the Char limit and came up with the following idea. Since all items in game are made out of a weapons skin, dam modifier, req, and 2 "magical" components. Can't we make the party search work like the template system? You can get a couple of pull down boxes:

• WTB
• WTS
• WTT

• Gold Weapon
• Purple Weapon
• Blue Weapon
• Green Weapon
• Weapon Mod

• SHIELD
• SWORD
• AXE
• BOW
• SCYTHE
• SPEAR
• DAGGERS
• WAND
• FOCI
• STAFF

• 15^50
• 15^Stance
• 15^enchanted
• 15 etc

• REQ 8
• REQ 9
• REQ 10
• REQ 11

• Vamparic
• Zealous
• Icy
• Firy
• Ebon
• Sundering 20/20
• Sundering 19/20
• etc

• Health +30
• Health +29
• Armor +5
• etc

These would then create a template code, which can be put in Party Search.

Second thought, There is already a system to make pvp items. Why not convert that with skins to party search. Or have a weapon code extractor.
Which reads out the characateristics of an item and puts the template code in to party search. There is allways away to make limits work

These problems tend to grow broader with time, and we're 30 months past release here. The CR problem you suggest strikes me as more a problem of improper marketing after release than one of the CR team being "bad".

The CR team should be getting better direction/support from above on how to identify the community's desires to management such that resources can properly be allocated towards addressing the issues the players care about. They generally do a good job of handling the traditional PR aspects of such a position. I suspect that the information sources utliized in the decision-making process are biased (I've heard some convincing anecdotes regarding the influence of a few community members on the nerf process) and that the CR team is generally doing a pretty good job, but I've got little more than innuendo to back up this supposition.

The question is this: where is the problem located?

a) information-gathering level (CR team)
b) information-processing level (CR team and dev decision-makers)
c) decision-making level (devs)

My wager is that neither levels a) nor b) operate in the systematic fashions needed to get good information to level c). Hardly the fault of the CR team; that's a question of the policies/procedures they and the devs that process their input work under, and should be laid at management's doorstep.

Another excellent potential solution which can build upon existing code. Probably less easy to implement server-side than individual districts, but a superior solution overall if the buyer can simply tab through the relevant postings as one could set up for play and shop at the same time.

i just want to say, the idea itself is probably okay ... but it feels like we are forced to use a system we just didn't want to use in the first place. and now you get pushed into the party search although you never wanted to use it, PLUS your message in the chat gets shorten too!

and either way, i just don't get it ... if we are using the trade channel anyways, like we are supposed to since its a TRADE channel, then why do we get forced to use the party search? what's the point in having the trade channel in that case?

things were better before this update. people that wanted to use the party search used it (as i did a few times as well), and ppl that didn't want to use it, just didn't.

plus, the way it's working now doesn't quite fit the description on the official GW site anyways:
"Whenever a party leader broadcasts "glf", "lfg", "lfp", "wtb", "wts", or "wtt" in All chat, that party will now be entered into Party Search automatically with that chat message used as the party's description."

here it's said this function counts for "All Chat" .... but it also fires in Trade Channel ... is this maybe just a bug? i think this is the first time i really hope for a bug
it would make a lot more sense to slap someone to the party window if they are spamming the All Chat than to punish people that use the Trade Channel in the first place.. c'mon, a while ago you told us people in All Chat spamming trades will be punished, but now it seems people that stick to the Trade Channel are getting a kick too?

Sure, I appreciate the effort A-Net did to try and boost the Party search function. And appreciate the lots of things they have added due player input. But it's just a fact that THIS thing here won't work this way with such a limited space on the party search text box.

Whatever you type will be cut in pieces if it's even a remotely long sentence - like good trade sentences usually are! Detailed! For example, I might want to sell my gemstone axe: "WTS req 11 Gemstone axe: Zealous, 15>50, +30 - make an offer!" and currently, get a minimal amount of that sentence through to the party search AND even trade chat! I don't want to start making vague WTS good Gemstone axe - descriptions either.

So PLEASE, A-Net, if you can't increase the space in party search box like Gaile said, at least let us write in trade chat a normal length trade announcement, like before. Keep the restriction in the party search window. Otherwise you have made selling in-game evern more impossible than it already is.

[edit] Eh, well, I guess one can always try to go around the WTS/WTB by using stuff like "selling" or "buying".

I want to add that the party search trade system is a good idea in principle. It allows us to see trade announcements from all districts, even different language-ones. I usually check the party trade to see if anyone is after anything - but the main handicap is the text box limitations. If we just could have more space, the functionability (is that even a word?) would be boosted up a great deal.

feedback:
- I like the changes concerning the party window. I was getting bored with resizing the window each time.
- There has always been a problem with the trade functionality in this game and the last effort doesn't improve things imo. The best solution would indeed be an auction house but that seems out of the question.

my suggestions would be:
- Indeed make a trade district, this will bring a part of the playerbase together again.
- This also would work for a pug district, so people who wanne play with other people have more chance there to find a human group to play with

On a side note Gaile, Anet did a lot of good stuff to improve the game since release. The party/trade search however is not good enough to be used.
I also understand you're a bit pissed off. We all have those days at work, but tomorrow is another day. The devs must know the concerns on this topic.

The bottom line is that if you are going to have messages that are interchangeable among different windows/channels, all attributes of these messages have to remain intact or it simply won't work. This includes length. Party Search window needs message size equivalent to what we can type in the chat channel or you simply cannot make the messages interchangeable between the two. It's just pathetic to think otherwise, design otherwise, and support otherwise. The Party Search window has gone from barely-used to cluttered mess of unreadable intent basically overnight. I don't know which one is worse, honestly.

I love the idea though of having the messages interchangeable, once it gets implemented correctly. It's cool that my WTS/WTB stuff gets put in the Party Window and vice versa. Saves me the trouble of having to type it twice (which I got into the habit of doing).

Then why are you forcing us to use it even though it's too limited to be of any use? You already knew the community's opinion about party search back during the discussions about trade spam, so that would mean the devs would have known that we didn't consider party search to be viable for trading unless the limited character problem was solved. Why then did Anet decide to implement this update?

so introduced this think knowing its apparent uslessness for trading purposes, well thats intresting .

So you do give us what we want somtimes, but somtimes you do things that makes everybody think wtf XD.

I can't believe people are complaining about this. No matter what they add in, people find a way to complain about it. I bet if Anet gave away free gold bars with Eye of the North, you guys would still find some way to whine about it. "It's not quite shiny enough".

Sure, it's kind of annoying that you can only fit in so many letters, but it's not that big a deal, it's still far easier to find people to trade with now, as everything up for trade is now listed in one place. It's easy to read and scroll through, instead of having to constantly scroll upwards in the trade window.

Great update, in my opinion.

Except the problem we have is that the Party Search Panel is a broken tool in its current form. There is not enough space. This was one of the first things said by various people when it was first introduced. We are baffled that they are promoting this thing when it so obviously needs attending to.

Yeah, that's a great tool they're trying to force us to use.

omg people, this means more options for all of us
not happy? type something other than WTS and you are not bumped into party search
personally I loved this and go both ways, I type up a title for my sale to go into party search and then go to trade chat
-> WTS The Stonereaper 5k
-> WT[SELL] The Stonereaper:: 5k:: 20/20 curses / curses+1 20% / energy+5:: by storage

Wanna set a party that's too specific, don't use party search, if doesn't fit your needs at the moment. but it does fit the needs of 90% of the community that's pugging at that exact moment

There's any number of ways to avoid going into party search or to put it to good use and still fit your needs. Stop exagerating. I personally bet all of you will end up making good use of this new feature. Tell me you are nto going to take a peek into the party search when you are in Lion's Arch / Kainneg City / Kamadan, please, do tell me.

this is an awesome idea

1) they need to adjust party discription length (imo its weird that they can't change this... I have some programming skills to and I know it doesn't look all that easy but still)
2) they need to give the ability to have more at the same time

if they do this then this is an awesome system no? then you can just scroll through what everyone is selling and see if you need something.

PS: I don't understand why so many are complaining,

You still can type: WT S, selling,.... if you need to type a longer description, wtf is your problem then, you can still use the old system but MANY ppl who are just selling gems, mini's, .... can use party window and will have an easier time selling.

I LOVE this idea, everything goes automated, with some adjustments this would just be perfect.

(these forums still haven't changed, still there are millions of little kids who cry when they don't get an icecream, grow up ppl, I feel sorry for the moderators and devs who need to read all this nonsense)

yep went from posting pinky WTS to posting pinky W T S.
I sure as hell will no be using the party search since it is useless.
I0'd rather just merch the few items that I get that are worth trading then bother with that piece of crap.

Then please tell me, what's the point of this change again EXACTLY?

So that we have an excuse to use WT S/W[T]S instead?

Imagine all people use those, and tell me what's the point of changing it in the first place?

To annoy us?

Everything about this place is illogical, most mission outposts have only 1 district anyway, and with one more player u can take 6 heroes and do much better than any pug. And if you think PvP is only my specific needs...you need to take your head out of the ground and realize this game is PvE+PvP, but PvP is what makes it unique.

Gaile...the vast majority of people just aren't going to use the party search feature (read: continue to spam) until the character limit is increased to at least that of the chat window. 30 characters is simply not adequate for trading, and often not adequate for party formations either.

you can fight tooth and nail with those who don't convey this message to your expectations of politeness, but it doesn't mean they're wrong.

if the character limit issue can't be rectified - which, as a programmer, i find very hard to believe - i think the party window change should be reverted. as it is, its just an annoyance and it hasn't done a darn thing to stop spammers.

I've said it many times in other threads. Read your "spectacular GW Reborn" version of PC Gamer where Mr. Strain says specifically that GW2 will use a modified version of the GW1 engine.

That's why all of the same problems will still exist, and they'll still nerf the crap out of anything they want when they want.


KANE

Actually, whenever I pugged this last month, the only time the party had to use heroes instead of people was if we couldn't find monks or some specific role like mm or nuker for a certain mission.

And I didn't say that PvP was your need alone and not someone else's, but that you can only look at it and not at other things because it's your need.

I don't think anyone said that this is part of "reduce the spam" program. For all I know it's part of "people will now take a peek at the party search function when they need something" program. People just assumed, for some reason, that it was related to spamming. I don't think it is.

I have the same problem I can't even fit in "W T B Wandalz's Refuge and Shagu's Anthem" without Anthem getting cut out, comon and remove this already anet.

I find the new party search to be just fine, I can find people I want easy since they get auto entered into the party search.

Traders I don't exactly care about so much since there is a channel for it.

*scratch* *scratch*....
Gaile... You seem not to understand your customers. You say you can't increase the PS character lenght. However, the limited size of it is a critical flaw. So much critical that it renders the whole feature useless, whatever you implement around it. A sport car with a lawn mower motor won't be able to win Indianapolis.
What people said to you (in a rude manner), is that you devoted time and money in a feature that has a critical flaw which remains unrepared. And so, you wasted time and money that would have been well used otherwise.
You say that you are entitled and very busy with GW:EN and GW2 game. That's okay. I can understand. However you don't repair and add features that have been asked for a long time before releasing it (PvP balance, Auction house, etc...). When you added space in the inventory, EVERYBODY applaused you. WHy? Because it was needed, it was asked by your customers, and it was well implemented.
All the features you added, PSearch window or automatic party window size, was not needed, not asked, and not well implemented.
So, the uproar from guruers.
I am to the point that I wonder if I must continue my relationship with the game you made. The issues are accumulating , are not repaired, and yet, you devote time to content that will forcely add broken features to the game, adding again to the general mess-up. I wonder why I would buy new content when so much things remain broken.
Most customers would be happy if you simply resolved the current issues before adding anything. I have been personally quite upset by the lag we had in Europe, loosing some GvG matches and wasting gaming time due to it.
I find myself playing less and less whereas I find your game fantastic overall.
I understand that you are working hard for such features.
Just don't waste anymore time to the PSearch, unless you increase character lenght. If you can't, let it die and do something else more pressing.

I am not sure how level headed everyone else is, but after trying it out for a dayish now I think I can give some feedback that is not just blaming everything on ANet and such.

The update overall was great, although it took me a chunk of time to download :-P, I think it was worth it. I am still getting used to some of the features (map still throws me off for now), but it was a good update.

And of course whats the point here? The Party Search. When I read the update news I almost jumped out of my chair and did an Irish Jig, because I am a big proponent of the Party Channel, and I thought auto diverting spam was brilliant. Yes people will get around it, and so forth, but it was cool, now it actually mattered. There ARE a couple of issues I have with after playtesting it for a while. So as not to seem like a typical jumpy customer whom any company never wants to deal with, I will be polite and just point it out, not (digitally) scream that ANet is filled with morons who don't care about their game and so forth. I could easily go into my 2+ years of experience with this game and gaming for 10+ years about how thats not true, but thats not the point.

Party Search Pros:
+ Automatically designating the spam to PS
+ Filtering it into proper areas in PS

Party Search Cons:
+ Character Limit (I know Gaile you mentioned its impossible to fix, but it IS a con)
+ Errors in filter (A lot of WTSs in the Mission, Hunting, and Guild PS area with normal WTS and such in their title which should be filtered)
+ Since Party Search is auto redirected to, the scrolling makes it so at a busy time I can't keep up with it, and its annoying.
+ Trade chat should not be punished when it is something that non-spammers use on a regular basis. As of right now, when typing WTS in TRADE chat, it redirects it to PS, and cuts off everything you typed, in PS of course and in Trade channel. It is NOT right, and honestly it should be reserved to All chat only, as it says in the update notes. Players and ANet have been trying to encourage Trade Chat use for a long time now, why punish it?

Those four things are the big problem when it comes to the new system, I bet three of them can be fixed (the filter, the trade chat entry, and the scrolling), and honestly, I designate the last three as the most important to look into, as the filter is frustrating, the trade chat should not be punished by the redirecting and message gimping, and the scrolling makes me unable to find the proper group I want. I have a feeling over all all this angst will float away since it is a major change, and change is met by fury typically, especially in the digital world where people believe they can get what they want no matter how little or how much they pay for something. Overall though, I DO think a lot of thought was put into this, and is something I HAVE seen asked for, as the Party Search was not as cumbersome as people would have believed. I have been using it since inception and liked it a lot. And now its more in use!

That said, I know the message size may be a limit we have to deal with, but those other three things really upset how I use the Party Search, it is rather frutstrating when trying to get things together in popular areas. I am not a big trader of goods but when I do I loved Trade Chat, felt like the stock market kinda. Maybe I am just weird, but gimping Trade Chat was my dissapointment in this update. Hopefully it can be fixed!

And don't get so down Gaile, there are still lots of us who appreciate what ANet does and realize that your not some jerk group trying to piss us off for some reason. Guild Wars has never been ruined by anything you guys have done, time will tell if you do :-P, but it hasn't yet. And although your posts here have been a little frustrated, I still think you staying in touch with the players is a big deal.

Alright so now that I brown nosed can I get those fixes

Gaile - this is probably the most obnoxious post you have ever written and you have written a few.

1: We did not ask for "party search" to sell and buy things - we wanted a workable trade system - party search is NOT it. It is less workable than the trade chat - that's why no one used it!!!! Forcing people to use an unworkable system shows that the DESIGNERS DO NOT PLAY THE GAME. Few who actually the game could think that buying and selling in party search in its current state is feasible. Hence, the conclusion that the people at ANet do not play their own game is a reasonable one.

2: How small the issue is? First we have a glut of gold weapons that we are expected to sell to other players. Second, we have a truncated system which makes it impossible to do so in a reasonable amount of time, thus requiring hours standing in towns either spamming in trade or hoping someone will understand 30 characters of abbreviations and ask to see what we are selling. If you assume that the only purpose of GuildWars is to go and kill things, you are right, it is a small issue. But if, as you said, you want people to interact more by selling to each other - then this is not only a major issue but almost makes the game unplayable in that area. The fact you think it is a small issue once again leads to the inevitable conclusion that ANet people do not play their own game - at least not often enough to really understand the dynamics.

3: You say increasing character limit is impossible. Fine! but the low character limit makes the party search method virtually unusable. No one with any common sense would ever think the best solution to fixing a broken system to FORCE PEOPLE TO USE IT. That's just dumb. If it really is impossible to fix it, fine, leave it alone. But to admit you can't fix it and then force people into it just shows the designers don't know their own game on a human level - ie - THEY DON'T PLAY IT!

4: I really hope the Devs DO see this thread. It's about time they realize how their dumb decisions upset people. Maybe then they would try learn to either leave things alone or find some way that is more workable rather than forcing a broken system on us.

OK - I'm glad they added party search - it was worth a shot. But experience showed very quickly it just wasn't working. To take that experience and then to the exact opposite of common sense (ie - to force people to use it) is just plain ridiculous.

I'm sorry but the biggest problem with guild wars now is not the programming but the attitude of the developers and you yourself. If you can't do something, fine.

But don't feed us c**p and tell us it's pie.

I'm leaning to the notion that the coder or coders responsible for the "party search" interface suffer from a prima donna complex. I mean, "How dare the player base largely ignore my important work!". "I know....lets force them automatically to engage this wonderful interface!".

Hey, it's good business to force your customers to smell crap, right? I also don't personally buy for a minute that they don't have the resources to fix this. Those type of comments smell worse than the stench of the "party seach" interface does.

OK I'm gonna add my 2 cents for what they're worth. Decide that for yourself lol.

I am NOT bashing Anet, the dev team or Gaile. I've played since the release of Proph, call me a fan girl. 2 years + and I love GW. I have chatted with Gaile a few times and seen for myself that they DO listen and DO care what fans think/want etc.

On to the...let's say less than positive. I HATE selling. HATE HATE HATE. I'd much rather be running around PLAYING than selling. For this reason (and laziness as well lol) I tend to wait till my mules and storage are packed up tight with mods and stuff before I go a-sellin'. As a seller I like to give as much info as the buyer needs ie mods/req and price. I love haggling but at least the ballpark I'm looking for. I have NEVER spammed All chat in my 2 years, that bugs the crap outta me. I use Trade chat politely, I never spam the same line over and over, I wait awhile between lines etc. In short, I followed the rules and did my best to be a polite and responsible seller.

Now the idea of the Party search was great. The reality with all the character limitation was not generally usable. If I just say WTS mods and inscr. it works, but WHICH mods? How much? No room. This changing your entry to -Party Search- Blah blah is annoying and makes scanning trade more difficult and imho just as clogged and fast as before. I have never resorted to the W T S trick but now I'm going to have to to give buyers any real info on what I need to sell. Please guys, either increase the size limit or scrap this. It is not usable as is and is just going to force those of us who HAVE always followed the rules of trade to work around it.

The idea of party search is excellent... the problem with it is the max of (more of less) 30 characters. Its simple, they could fix this by allowing us to type longer messages. If they fix that, it will be an awesome feature that a lot of people will use.

As a programmer myself I find it very hard to believe that anet cant find a way around the character limit. To be honest, I dont really care since I dont PvE anyways, but it just seems too unbelievable.

Now I dont know Anets code, but I'll take a shot: Why not just simply program a loophole that tricks it into thinking that the person who made the party advertisement did it twice, and then simply have the second "ghost" connection to the server display the rest of their message, taking up a second line. That way the code would see it as the same as someone else advertising a party below that person, and then you could simply erase the players name for the second line.

Like I said, this is a shot in the dark since I have no idea what your code could possibly be and Ive refrained from saying anything technical because of it. To summarize: I dont believe you that its impossible. If you fooled around with the code enough, Im sure their would be a way. A roundabout way, but a way.

Im not really demanding this from anet...Im just saying it more as a challenge. Im one of those programmers who tends to bash his head on the wall untill he can get around something, so it may be best to ignore me.

The fact that A.net devs team has been able to develop so many features, is the reason that leaves customers surprised for the long series of mistakes occurred when they addressed the problem of WTS spamming in towns.

For the poor computer programming ignorants like me, we see a lot of new features developed from the scratch, like the party search window itself.

As far as we know, it was not an adaptation of something existing in the game before. It was something totally new, a new window with specific features.
It's hard to understand the fact that the current game programming doesn't allow more than 30 characters.
Such explaination would have been more acceptable if, for instance, someone asked to have 200 chars messages in the chat window, or 40 letters for the name of a char. Those thing have been unchanged since the 1st game release, and not added later like the PS window.

So, the PS windows has been designed in the wrong way, plain and simple.

I understand that there are more important deadline for the team, so my guess is that A.net has given this job to a less expert group of programmers, and focused their best resources for GW:EN.

And those programmers made mistakes after mistakes after mistakes until the latest update, that really sound like a joke.
I imagine that even A.net competitors are looking and laughing at it, happy of the negative impact that such hilarious update has on A.net customers.


That said, I don't understand why not adopting the simplest solution, that is creating specific outpost for trading, call them Trade City or Spam City, accessible as soon as a player arrives in Ascalon, Kamadan or Shing Jea, in which players can shamelessly spam their a$$es off, leaving city chat free.

Creating an outpost, with no special environment, just Xunlay storage, merchant and traders, that really would be a joke with all the ultra sophisticated features offered by the developing tools used by A.net.


No, instead they wasted time (and money) to make absurd things like redirecting the WTS to the PS window.
OMG this sounds to me really more complicated to program.

Does the current game engine allow to do this redirection with few instructions, and not to put 30 chars in the PS description, for which GW2 engine is required?

I've done a little programming and I know that something that looks really simple to the user might have been a pain to code. Something that looks like it would be easy to fix may be actually really complicated. I don't think A-net is stupid or sadistic. They are doing their best. They know now that some people are having trouble with this new system and insulting them isn't gonna help.

I love how all the closet coders suddenly come out the woodwork... /sigh

Simple fact is, changing the char limitation wouldn't be a big task, no matter how you try and spin it. This is not some major change that would require masses of security testing.


Christ.

You don't know that. User interfaces are usually constructed by putting elements of a widget toolkit together. As you might imagine, it is highly likely that ANet coded their own widget toolkit in order to realize the user unterface in GW, and the toolkit itself might not have any scrollable widget that can handle "long" lines of text. Now, you might think what you want about this, bad design or whatever, but rewriting the widget to handle long texts would be a major task. The programming itself is not the lions share of the work - Testing that every other interface component in the game using that widget behaves correctly after the fix is. (Even using OO inheritance etc. the entire package might have to be retested - Depending on implementation and assuming worst case of course )

Of course, that still doesn't mean it's impossible. But given the return on investment (basically new boxes sold) it might very well be infeasible.

All the above being speculation, but it shows how a seemingly trivial change might entail a massive workload.

I originally opened this thread to see the thoughts of the community on this update, since I haven't had a change to use all the features.

Right now, I personally don't care one way or another about this update. Sure, things need improvements. That usually happens when something new is implemented.

But there's no need to call the people at Anet idiots. It's a GAME people, if you're upset, walk away, and come back when you've cooled down.

Yes, I agree. It WAS poorly implemented. But this item is very small compared to the big picture of the game. Go farm a bit, go do something else, until they fix it.

I guess it just shows my age.

I am so with you on this one. I see a lot of hot heads, and the older i get the mellower i become....and i invoke the.."mehhh SH*T happens" clause
I can see why people are upset. It is somewhat forcing them to use the PS when they dont really want to. And that can be a bit frustrating if you dont intend to use it that way.
But i agree, ive learnt that calling people names down the phone usually gets me a "im not being spoken to like that" ....CLICK response.
If i'm congenial, and use my head and ask pertinant questions along with constructive answers, then i get a much better response

Seriously Gaile, I am with you on your reaction, and with others on it too. As my old granny once said, "if ya cant say anything nice, dont say anything at all" I was a sales product manager. And i used to nod, bite my tongue and walk out..get in the car and scream any obcenity i could figure out..
But on the other hand i can see why you said what you said... there does seem to be a lot of "i want this and i want it now" people, like kids at the sweetie stall.

I dont really care about the PS feature. It comes in handy when we call a guild team together in a big area, we just put it in the PS instead now. I rarely trade in game i really use auctions on guru its easier , less time consuming and i can go play the game and kill things, whilst its doing its job in the background.
I really dont get upset about it. I get upset on things like lag....why ...cos it wont let me play the game...i get upset about losing my internet...why ...cos it wont let me play the game.....
The party search feature isnt going to stop you playing the damn game, in anyway shape or form, so i just dont get it, why arent you lot doing that..
If i dont like a TV channel i turn it over or off....if you dont like a feature...dont bloody use it