Suggestion for Community Relations

I know that this is a suggestion, but please keep it here in Riverside were it would have greater visibility and more possibility of being seen by the CR people.

My idea is to come up with a way for the CR's to be able to get quantifiable data on issues that the playerbase has on specific issues. Many times throughout all the different forums, players post polls on different aspects in GW, ie is UB overpowered or not. The problem is that since forum users make up such a small percentage of GW players, that the results from these polls bring attention to possible issues, but not directly reflect what the majority of the population believes.

A way to solve this and give the CR's a much clearer picture of what the GW population feels on a particular issue would be to have the dev's add a way the ability to conduct an ingame poll.

One way to implement this would be to create a new NPC at the Temple of Balthazar. Have it set up that when the big update at the begining of each month, there is a new poll question that this NPC would ask. Make the NPC work as if it was a quest giver with the green ! and the quest be answering "yes" or "no"to the question. Make this quest only availble once per account per month to keep people from distorting the results. Make sure that the poll question is both posted on the website and in the log in announcements and where to go to participate to reach the majority of players. I would suggest giving a reward to those that complete this quest to entice players to participate otherwise this whole system would be for nothing. Since this would happen monthly with the changing of the tonics, perhaps consider giving each player one of the new tonics for the month or a Zkey. Either of these rewards should not effect the economy adversily, but unique/worth enough to ensure that most players would participate.

At the end of the month, the CR's can take this info to the dev's and show them that this is how the player base feels on this particular subject, something that cannot be truely done now. I would not release the results of the polls, since that would give the GW population a sense of entitlement that something will be done based on the results, which would be bad if for some reason that the dev's feel that acting on the results is not possible.

On a side note, I do realize that those with multiple accounts do get to vote more than once but unfortunately there is no way around that. I'd like to think of it in terms of shares, that those with more shares in a company have more votes than those with less.

Thanks, hope someone from the CR team reads this and considers the possiblity.

I don't want to start a trend of people posting suggestions in Riverside for more visibility. Moved.

I think they had a "poll" about a skill update once, yet they pretty much ignored it.

For some reason game companies aren't comfortable with democracy.

Yet there is a Stickied thread in Riverside saying "GW Helper List" which would be better off in Questions & Answers.

Sounds good to me

/signed

Hmm, sounds cool. I'd do it

/signed

Thy could add the option to the Xunlai Agents.
When an ingame poll is conducted, they would have a scroll icon over them, and people could vote once per account.

Put a poll on Guild Wars log in page whenever there's an update after a months or (appropriate time frame) for all users to vote.

It could be a good idea. It's certainly better than the current (ie: none) system. My only concern is that when collecting information regarding game-critical changes (such as balance), the average player isn't a reliable source.

And who is? Izzy already gets the info from the PvP crowd , so let the rest of the player base have a say for a change.

But seriously, they don't want our opinion on changes, if they did there would have been a system in place already.

Polls in general are a source of dubious reliability--people who WANT to complete the poll often have a significant issue that they want to talk about. People who don't have issues often don't VOLUNTEER to complete the poll.
Also...how many responses do we expect ANet to count as significant? Would 100 different respondents be enough? 1,000? Higher? If an overwhelming number of people responding to the poll said "Nerf X," would ANet ... nerf X? Or would that number of responses be because those people reeeeeeeallly want X nerfed?

Not sure I love a popularity contest that determines fundamental game mechanics and design.

Bots would love this, as they would be able to provide input on issues that may make changes to help them. Who decides that the poll is about? If the Devs thought there was a problem with Ursan (for example), they would have made some changes to it, and then read what people said about those changes. They obviously see no need to change it, so why ask the player base? People who play PvE only have different opinions on the same topics as people who play PvP only, and people who play both. People who HA regularly often have differing opinions from people who play GvG regularly.

Creating a poll might be interesting, but not helpful. How many people play daily? How many weekly? How many monthly? Think they have the same knowledge and opinion about things? Yes, a poll would help show what people think, but knowing what people think doesn't allow for changes that would help the game.

Easier thing for them to do would be to have a website that allows people to register based on their account name, and post suggestions there. However, the huge amount of work just to read through all the crap would prevent them from finding many of the 'gems'. That would also require someone to be paid to sort through them.

Would be interesting, but not useful.

/unsigned

/Signed.

I doubt that they would put up questions on issues where bots could change the game in their favor (I.E. removing bans, making the /report system less effective, etc.). This would probably be for small things. These would only be for questions where they would want player feedback, which the team has expressed a big interest in having anyway.

And I have a feeling that with the PvE/PvP skill split there really wouldn't be a lot of issues that PvP/PvE players would vote differently on, as long as they prefaced it properly; for instance, "Should skill X be nerfed to oblivion in PvP?" That's really the only opinion, other than maybe weekend events, where the PvE/PvP players would differ.

When the average player goes into AB and goes like "NOOBZ 1V1 RUNNARS Y U NO FIGHT ME?!?!?!111////" how can you trust what they say?

Atleast they are open about it.

No sneaking around by competitive players doing unauthorised "skill balances" behind the back of the rest of the community. Can't get much worse than that, can it?

(Too bad the thread with the screenis seams to have vanished)

Player 1 plays PvE only.
Player 2 plays PvP only.
Player 3 plays both.

Poll question:

Does Aegis have too long a recharge to be used effectively in GvG?
a) Yes
b) No
c) Not with recharge mods on weapons
d) No, but energy cost is too high
e) Yes, but energy cost is not high enough

Player 1 answers with *a*.
Player 2 answers with *c*.
Player 3 answers with *d*.

And as I'm sure the people who will flame me for saying which answer they would give will tell you.... those are dependent on the individual. How does a PvE only player know what is worth answering on a GvG related question? How does Anet know the person answering is a PvE only player?

I'd rather cover myself with honey and sit on a Fire Ant hill then open that can of worms.

MagmaRed, it's Anet that would put up the poll questions and I'm fairly sure they wouldn't put one up like you pointed out, I sure wouldn't if I was them. But it could be a tool to help find out information that normally isn't represented ingame and be a larger sampling of the population versus what you find using forums such as this.

Maybe instead of just a poll it could be a series of questions. I.e. gender, preferred play style, character type most played, and then the question which is the purpose of 'poll'.

/signed from me. I think it would be nice having some input from in game players other than just from the few of us who post on these forums.

Whit a list of questions you ensure that only people that really care about it would do it...

...as long as the answers are displayed in randomized lists, a player would see a list like this:
A
B
C
D

And a next would see:
B
D
C
A

So bots would not be a ble to automatize the stuff.