Does the community know what they want?

No one said anything about constructive complaining. Complaining doesn't normally mean constructive at all. Usually it's people whining and what not. And no the Facepalm wasn't at you avarre, it was more just out of frustration.

GW2 is a long time away, should give them enough time to get their chit straightened out hopefully.

Constructive complaining is still complaining, regardless of someone mentioning it. You can't classify all complaints as crying.

Complaining is expressing dissatisfaction. Are you trying to say you cannot express dissatisfaction without being constructive about it?

actually the HoM is now account based, as far as what your characters in GW2 will receive. if you max LB on one character in GW1 and SS on another, your GW2 characters will receive benefits, such as they may be, from both of those characters. after all, the only reason to grind these titles out is for the supposed benefits they may have in GW2. so play whichever class you desire and get titles on one character that you don't have on the other and you will still be set when GW2 hits the shelves.

HoM benefits for GW2 is one thing that the community suggested and devs changed but didn't get a lot of credit or applause for. that's the way it goes with gaming communities, devs and CR employees only hear about things that their players are upset about but not things they've done well. part of the reason is because there is always something to complain about, whereas with things that are working properly or are beneficial to the entire community, devs hear "well it should be that way" instead of "you did a good job on that".

obviously they did a good enough job to sell 5 million or so units and are still doing enough to keep a couple million of us playing. i say if you enjoy playing the game, keep doing it, if not stop. if you have suggestions, make them, but don't cry when things don't go your way. that's life. not everything is going to go your way all of the time. deal with it or find a way around it.
btw it would be foolish of a company to not listen to what their consumers are saying about their product. if the majority is saying something, then it should be taken into account. something doesn't always have to be done or said about it, but it should still be listened to. a company that doesn't listen to its consumers is a company doomed to a short life.

A poll on a forum is much more valid than a poll in-game. When you poll all the players you're taking in votes from people who don't know much about the game, and those people make up a huge majority of the playerbase.

But in response to the OP: The community is not a single entity. Each person wants a different thing out of the game.

You pretty much got it.

People go on and on saying "NERF DIZ SKILL"
Anet nerfs said skill
People go on and on saying "OMG WTF Y U NERF DIZ SKILL"

It happens every. single. time. Nobody wins.

For forums in general, yes. Many people do not construtively complain.

I know what I want and I can only get half of that if they up their game. I want challenging PVE that I can solo. No heroes, no hench, just me. Just like in WoW. I want teams to be optional and not forced outside PVP. Basically, I want what GW2 is rumoured to have.

You'll never find someone making a post every day saying "I'm happy with this skill", so you'll never truly know what the community wants as a mass. As a single entity, that will never happen.

They still play the game and make it possible for the rest of us to continue playing it, and as such should have a say, as much as any of us have.

Doesn't matter where you're polling, people are stupid. The forum has more hardcore players, but a hardcore player isn't necessarily a good player.

Arenanet's problem is not figuring out what players want, that's not a difficult task. They just can't decide what problem they want to solve and how they want to solve it, and they take months to fix a problem.

Dont misquote me.

Account based HOM means being able to contribute towards filling your HOM up with multiple characters, which I have heard Anet are going to do. E.G. 5 seperate characters with one ascended armor each gives you a full Armor monument. Account based weapon monument instead of player based ones so I can add my weapons from different characters. Also maybe allow end game greens to count towards the HoM as well because each character can only achieve one of these per campaign.

It's not a question of whether the community knows what it wants, but whether they know what's good for them.

'The community' is unfortunately not a collective decision maker. Individuals know and get what they want, but as the community as a whole doesn't always want the same thing this is a stupid topic.

Personally I want to have fun and challenge outside of grind.

Community in this medium = whatever the majority feel positive or negative about imo.

It's defined by what ever is relevant to the player at the time.

Example:SF buff.

Community = A million new posters posting threads titled: "How do I farm UW?"

Yup.

So.... its somehow more fair by going to a minority of the people and excluding the majority of the playerbase?

I think this is precisely what is wrong with Anet's usual role. They spend too much time listening to a small group of whiny morons, implement some rash changes to try to placate the whiny morons, and end up screwing the game up for the majority of the people playing who could care less about the whiny morons' opinions.

The only reason I'd consider forums more "valid" are because the people are more experienced. But that's it. It doesn't eliminate any bias from them, nor does it mean that all players are "equally good".

Aside from that, couldn't agree more.

Is it smart guiding your game based upon people who know very, very little about it?

Besides: nearly everything seen on this forum concerns with game issues that aren't seen or accessed on the surface.

Bahahah i thought the HM update was supposed to encourage playing multiple characters. But yeah 7 heroes would be nice or they could just balance the pve game to a party of 4 would be easier and less mess but hey we need more pvp meta game fixes.

The community as a whole never agrees completely. Anet has employees who surf the forums and try to discern if the community overall is having a legitimate issue with the game or not. Sometimes a topic may be hot and involve much QQing, but is only a special interest group lobbying for something the majority or players don't want or need. Employees like Gaile,Andrew and now Regina sort out issues they feel are representative of the community concerns after reading many forums and recommend that the devs may have to look into certain issues.

As a player we all want one thing really, which is to be entertained. GW has dried up on new content which basically leaves me waiting on GW2. I do not like endless repletion I usually do everything in the game on my main character then wait 3 months and do everything again on a alternate character and I'm done till new content comes out. My main issue now is leasurely finishing up a couple of titles so I can have a good start at GW2.

The truth is nobody truly knows what they want.

I'd like the core philosophy of GW Prophecies to be maintained as that attracted me to the game in the first place.

In a perfect world I'd hope Anet have tried a few things and learned from what worked and what failed with the goal being towards GW2 awesomeness.

In saying I fear GW2 will just end up being a WoW clone.

Time will tell.

Each person in the community knows what they want.
All of those people do not want the same thing.
None of those people know what's the best for them or the community.

I don't see what's so hard to understand. Anyway, these two posts are the answer to every single thread like this: