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So ANET can't afford a forum? Why?
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Well the issue there is to find the signal amongst all of the noise. In my experience, actual useful criticism is about 5% of all the QQ posts that end up on official forums. Really most of the posts are just total opinionated bullshit.
And for those that keep repeating on where would they report bugs and such, there are already support forums. That is what they are used for.
Honestly I've always thought that was one of the main reasons Anet didn't have an 'official' forum in the GW1 days. The fan sites could, and often were, be as draconian as they wished and Anet's hands were clean. Send Gaile Gray around to drop a tidbit every once in a while and watch the fan sites do your work for you. If an official forum was ever half as draconian as GWGuru could be there'd be hell to pay. But since it was a fan site Anet could shrug and say "Isn't us!".
Never really understood why people were mostly (the subject did come up with fair frequency) fine with this, but not surprised Anet is going down the same path again.
They are a game developer not a babystting service.
Grim Dawn, the next great action rpg!
http://www.grimdawn.com/
well moderation is a fine line, someone will complain either way
okay, forums..
Class forum - every single class is underpowered, every other class is OP. No matter what class forum you go to, its the same. Useful feedback that is.
Server forum - Flame, flame and more flame.
Support forum - Same questions repeatedly, though this is needed imo as issues getting the game running will loose users (non that the payment model is really effected right away)
PvE - I want better loot blah blah, X is to hard we can't down him but we are so uber pro
PvP - I lost, the game is broken and unbalanced, the one where you have to get the flag.. now what is it called again.. hmm?
at the end of the day the feedback is pretty unless to the devs, its a poor community, and a ongoing cost that's a waste.
Fan sites tend to have a much better community, unfortunately there isn't normally a need for them as the official forum is the place to be.
Given the sheer craziness on these forums i'd personally rather they continue with what they are doing right now since there seems to be a "my game's better then yours" forum wars going on in these forums which would explain the reaction you got OP from saying what you said in the title of this post. That they can't afford one. (even my ten year old nephew knows that's not true)
So, I'd rather have an in game means of sending them feedback about their game in a civilized manner and cut out all the nonsense that happens in these forums because as you can see from my signature it happens all too often, some fanboy of another game is going to go out of their way to say something negative and completely untrue of GW2 just to make it seem worse then it is. (this is opposed of course to the hours of footage, the documentation and the time the rest of us put into finding out the truth about these titles to make an informed decision and let others know about what we've found)
Oh and then there are the games that say they have open forums but censor like crazy just to keep people in their own game from pointing out how bad a game REALLY is instead of fixing the issues with a game and saying they are sorry for messing up, charging people for something that shouldn't have been released yet, and making the game as best a player experience they can possibly make their game.
Oh really.. i preffer to talk with some one who own the game instead of all random peoples.
Secondly.. fan sites got ads with viruses, fanatic mods, AND nothing tell me that devs will ever read my post.
what makes you think they would read your posts on an official forum either? Unless it's on a support forum, your chances are slim to none.
They don't.
Send them an email, you don't have to throw forum tantrums with 100 other trolls to get your points across.
Funny enough did Strain spend a lot of times on fan forums when he was the head of ANET.
I have no clue about if Mike or Erik do the same though. But the uestion is how much actual devs ever read on a official forum, posts by them are rare in most cases, 9or none existing..
I want to emphasize all of this and add to it. Every time I look at GW2G (which is less and less now), I see several posts that are locked for one of these reasons:
"There isn't enough to discuss on this topic."
"It looks like everyone has already stated their opinions."
"This can be discussed in whatever mega thread where a different discussion is already taking place."
No thread locked in these or similar ways violate any rules, and yet all of the mods lock threads like this constantly. I would call that being a rogue moderator. They are disregarding rules and locking threads on their own whims. They are not "keeping the peace". They're treating the community like their own personal gardens and pruning away whatever threads they happen to not like the look of.
Well, they could tell everyone about it. They could link it as a "Recommended Forum" as they did with Guild Wars.
And that's where I see it all falling apart...
The thousands of voices complaining about how ArenaNet told them to go to a forum where they can't even report bugs without a moderator leaping on them...
Yeah, this is going to end well.
Yeah... recommending GW2G would be the absolute worst move they could make in this situation.
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
When you don't have an official forum, you give way for a lot of other sites to foster a community. These communities then hold their own tournaments and events. This is still possible with an official forum, but it won't be as elaborate.
That has been their last "official" stance on official forums. MMO's with official forums generally have small communities outside their official game site.
Ever wonder why MMORPG.com has so many Guild Wars 2 fans? Because there is practically an unofficial official community here. Same place happens at all the other fan sites.
All this probably wouldn't happen if everyone just stuck to the official forums.
Now then, with that, if you follow other big games, you see that the developers who participate in the forums are usually the PR people. Not so with Guild Wars 2. Even on unnoficial forums, their systems designers and lead designers are constantly dropping in to clarify things.
That is much more official than PR marketing.
Mmmmm... so not true. Sure, each of those forums contain those types of posts but they also contain-
Role/Class - Rate the guy above you. These are fun threads, it allows players to give and take advice with one post. Special snowflake players don't have to participate or ever get near the thread, but for players that want to be the best they can be (and pursue that by learning from better geared/spec'd players who are usually better at their skills), it's the best thread ever.
Why is this guy spec'd like this? He seems really good at the game but he chose this talent or that skill. What's he doing? Other players respond with answers like "SephirothPaladin is bleeding-edge hardcore, and that particular talent starts to have some value when you need to milk every particular point out of [x] that you can. He can afford to sacrifice [z] talent because he has someone else in the raid bringing it.
Server Forum - Reporting Assholes to the server's community. It's good to know if [x] person is a dick. There's also a lot of games in bigger servers' forums sometimes, and a lot of talk about the best guilds on the server.
PVE - Why are we wiping on this boss? This is our raid comp and this is what we're doing. Anyone have any advice.
PVP - I lost, the game is broken. lol. No, PVP forums also have a lot of baiting (nothing wrong with that, it is PVP), they also have a lot of players saying things like "I always lose against [x], any advice on how I can handle this class"? And sometimes, when the toolsets just clash that better, the answer is "An [x] against a [y] should just run away and live to fight another day. That class is your class' counter"
Support forums - It lets the devs know when an issue is still an issue. Yes, the constant posting of the same issue is annoying, but it gives them an idea of how big a problem is. It also lets the community know when something is a server's issue. If I'm having connection problems, or just bought the game and getting installation errors and I go to the forums and see four threads 3 pages long about the same issue on the front page, I know that there's really a problem going on.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
quick pro-tip from someone who has seen mallace's posts elsewhere. Ignore him, he's been banned because all they attempt to do is flame and troll anything GW 2-related. There is an occasional bit of insight rarely, but overall their "opinion" is about as invalid as one can be. They also don't know what Communism is, Comrade.
As for the whole Official/Fan forum thing, what works works. The ArenaNet team is active on most every GW site I'm a member of, and while an "Official" forum would serve to unify the community, people would still end up using fansites regardless. I have nothing against the concept of an official forum, but generally speaking the amount of "troll" posts increases exponentially when everyone posts in one forum and said forum is an official part of the game. It can also wring out more drama as well, which tends to swell and bloat things as well, specially when server-specific forums are around.
Guild Wars has a support forum, which is actually one of the few "required" things I like to see in an MMO.
Guild Wars Guru seems to work well enough as a focal point, since a vast majority of in-game community events is announced through there. And yes, while an official forum would make it probably easier to spread news of those events around, it again opens it up to more trolling and drama. I've already seen some occasional "trolling" done by guilds or individuals during these community events, and I'd hate to give them an easier time to do so by opening up forums for them to infest.
I recall in Guild Wars 1 that there was a decision not to have a company message forum, but to support top Fan run forums with some developer posts etc. instead.
Company decision, can't remember their reasoning at the time.
2 reasons why the launch of GW2 will be great:
1) You get to play the game
2) The constant string of non-issue threads (like this one) cease to exist.
Forum whiners getting their way have negatively effected games from DAOC to SWTOR; I for one could care less if there isn't a "NERF SORCS NOW; I lOST AND AM BUTT HURT" forum.
The OP still hasn't answered the question posed to him/her.....who said Anet can't AFFORD an official forum? Note the word "AFFORD." Where did you get THAT idea?
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
If anyone else had did this, we would never hear end of it. Anet does it, and it's "ok".
In War - Victory.
In Peace - Vigilance.
In Death - Sacrifice.
Who says they can't afford it, OP? There's really no point in following this logic to a conclusion with no factual basis for the discussion in the first place. Also, what is a "serious" company?
Happy Friday, regardless!
ArenaNet hasn't "done" a damn thing yet. The game isn't released. So why don't we wait and SEE what they're going to do? What a novel idea. This game has so much assumption both good and bad that it's ridiculous. I really think it makes more sense to wait and find out the TRUTH of the matter before wiggin' out.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
I don't see the value in a company forum. It's a very vocal minority trying to convince the devs they are the majority. Then you end up with a game catering to a minority, thus pissing off the majority that never even visit a forum. If they really want feed back , submit polls to customers at login (optional of course) with the ability to submit an opinion (they would need to limit wording to 500/1000 words or be hit by walls of text). This way much of the emo drama can be avoided, as it really doesn't add any value.
Archlinux ftw
I will always aprove this decision, from any MMO developer.
Oficial non-technical related forums are for whiners and trolls only.
Ain't it the truth? One only has to look at the WoW forums and WoW's history of DEvolution into what it is today, to SEE the reason for NOT having "official" forums (other than tech support, of course).
Still....we have no idea for certain what Anet will ultimately do, so this whole conversation is kind of silly. From what they've SAID...I tend to think they won't have them, but again....we don't know for sure right now.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
[Mod Edit]
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club