Quick Poll: What sort of dev tracker would you prefer?

I think it would be best if the dev tracker focused on just the dev posts, and wasn't influenced by player posts. That way it will act more like the name implies, by tracking dev posts and showing when and where they're posting. :)

Edit: corrected the auto correct. X.x

I'd like a more traditional approach.

Many forums i use have an entirely different way of doing dev tracking which is just to have a page that showcases only the dev post. Think of it like an ANet RSS feed if you will. It showcases the thread title, and a simple preview of the post (1 sentence). This lets the users see the activity and click the post and jump straight to it.

I'm surprised at so many people (so far) voting for the thread option. The way I see it:

1. Dev's don't post THAT much. Really, you're lucky to see a couple a day unless something major is going on.

2. If you go the thread route you still have the problem of trying to find the dev post(s). If it's a busy thread that can be unnecessarily time consuming and often loses the general "chain" of what piece of the thread the dev is trying to reply to.

I'd definitely rather just see all the posts and click into the thread for context if I want to see more. The couple of times a year there's a Q&A thread or a particularly active topic for dev replies I'll click "next page" once or twice if needed, no big deal.

The "carousel" already shows all recent posts, including ones from the same thread. So I'd rather a "devtracker" just show the most recent thread in which a developer has posted.Ideally, each would have a forward and backward arrow, so we can easily navigate to earlier/later posts.

For me it sounds like the second option is the best. But only because there already is "Latest ArenaNet Posts" on the page.But I would like to see more details about each thread like how many ArenaNet responses are there and make quick links them (like next and prev. as the guy above me suggests).

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:

@"Kunzaito.8169" said:

2. If you go the thread route you still have the problem of trying to
   find
   the dev post(s). If it's a busy thread that can be unnecessarily time consuming and often loses the general "chain" of what piece of the thread the dev is trying to reply to.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:The "carousel" already shows all recent posts, including ones from the same thread. So I'd rather a "devtracker" just show the most recent thread in which a developer has posted.Ideally, each would have a forward and backward arrow, so we can easily navigate to earlier/later posts.

That would be awesome. I know the worst part of the current system is looking for the dev post in the thread. Sometimes I'm like "is there really a dev post here or am I being trolled?" cuz I'll be sifting through 30 pages back and forth and still not find the post lol. :lol:

The first option seems the easiest and most organic to follow. The second option means havung to search a thread when all i want is a direct link to an exact posting.

An additional thing to consider: currently there is no form of dev tracker on mobile devices. Not sure if it's possible to do anything about that.

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:That is on my request list.Super :)

It remains to be seen if it -- well, if any of this -- can happen.Yeah :((It's worth repeating often; I'm sure we'll all forget how slow Vanilla is to adapt.)

@"Kunzaito.8169" said:I'm surprised at so many people (so far) voting for the thread option. The way I see it:

1. Dev's don't post THAT much. Really, you're lucky to see a couple a day unless something major is going on.

2. If you go the thread route you still have the problem of trying to find the dev post(s). If it's a busy thread that can be unnecessarily time consuming and often loses the general "chain" of what piece of the thread the dev is trying to reply to.

I'd definitely rather just see all the posts and click into the thread for context if I want to see more. The couple of times a year there's a Q&A thread or a particularly active topic for dev replies I'll click "next page" once or twice if needed, no big deal.

Regarding 2:People can already jump directly to the dev's post in the thread by clicking the red "ArenaNet" tag under the thread name in the list of threads. No need to search the thread for their response. You can also jump to the next post by a dev in that thread if there is one to jump to by clicking the ">" (jump to next dev post button) after the dev's name in their comment's header.

On the note of the ">" (which is extremely hard to miss as being there or serving an actual purpose), in my themes I added some text to it and skinned it as an actual button to make it obvious what it is and what it does. All it took was 1 addition to their CSS that they could quickly add, or they could even go in directly and change the ">" to actual words instead of an easily missed/ambiguous character.

!!(More photos of my theme colors available in my signature if interested)!! .tag-tracker::after! {! content: "Next post in this discussion";! font-size: 13px;! font-style: italic;! background-image: linear-gradient(180deg,#00cccc,#006666);/THEME VARIABLE/! border-radius: 18px;! padding: 0px 10px 0px 5px !important;! margin-left: 5px;! }

I prefer how the dev tracker on the old version work. Just a chronologically ordered list of dev posts. The carousel is terrible for readability and tracking. The current dev tracker is basically useless which is why I haven't used it since the switch to the new forum. I don't want to have to click through to each thread just to check if the post is relevant or not. In the old forum if I see a relevant post I can click into the thread to see the context.

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:

@"TexZero.7910" said:I'd like a more traditional approach.

Many forums i use have an entirely different way of doing dev tracking which is just to have a page that showcases only the dev post. Think of it like an ANet RSS feed if you will. It showcases the thread title, and a simple preview of the post (1 sentence). This lets the users see the activity and click the post and jump straight to it.

That feels as if it might be what we had in the past. I am not sure, and I will check the helpful archive that a member made, but I honestly can't remember whether we listed posts or threads in most-recent-post order.

I think it was fairly close to that.Here's a few off site links that showcase things closer to what i'd like to see as they are what im familiar with.https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/redtrackerhttps://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/groups/overwatch-developer/activity/posts

Now i know the forum software usage is different and may be prohibitive of doing it in a similar manner, but i feel this layout is far more user friendly and intuitive than what we currently have (or dont).

2nd make sense, always thought dev trackers suppose to only show what dev posted and not what others posted.

Suggestion:Order topics based on relative activity, recent posts are at the top of the list, with a red icon if a dev has ever been involved.WITHIN the topic, 'sticky' all dev replies to the top of the page

Whatever you folks opt for, please keep the color theme. Makes it easy for reading, without giving you seizures halfway through a 10 page thread.Bright Colors = No Bueno!

I would say keep the dev threads on the top of the forum to keep up with what’s going on. Leave the comments in the actual time.

And if/when a dev posts into a different thread of someone else, it would show as a notification to everyone if they want to see them. However I would add a feature into the setting, if people want to see when the devs make a comment or not.

I would also make a notification if the devs upgraded someones thread for the dev. To know that it is something the devs are commenting in, or paying attention to. But I would also make a feature into setting for people have the choice if they want the notification or not.

Flag threads with dev posts and allow readers to click on the flag to filter out all non-dev posts in that thread. Readers can rely on quotations for context. A separate dev tracker is not necessary.

@"Zedek.8932" said:I think it would be nice if you guys could also hide posts from the devtracker.

They could hide all posts from a specific ArenaNet member, but not specific posts, since that'd essentially require posting on a different account. If that's what you want, you can search by author (click the arrow in the search box to see the options).

You can kind of hybridize the approaches.

Thread-based is fine, but you can then try to do something like what League of Legends' old forums had which was that in any thread with multiple dev posts, there was a second set of navigation links (like the previous/next page ones and in the same area) which were exclusively for "Previous/Next Riot (or in this case, ANet) Post."

This way the feed's posts are condensed by topic so all discussion is visible, but also still gives interested players the ability to hunt down individual dev posts in active topics they're interested in discussing without having to look through the whole thread.

It should only track devs posts with some way of showing how many players posts have been added since you last read it...maybe a little red number in the corner