Forum Suggestion: please display hours played

I'm getting tired of posting opinions to the forums only to inevitably have someone say "you must be new etc. etc." Or "you must not have been playing long" and then proceed to explain to me the basic mechanics of the game as thought they are being helpful.

As a solution I feel like next to our user names on every post it displays the total number of in game hours played for that account across all characters, so we can see not only who has seniority when speaking but also whether someone knows what they are talking about.

You could even throw In total hours played from gw1 and add that to the total as well, it couldn't hurt.

Edit: you can show the users achievement points as well, this would eliminate any notion that the player spent the majority of their displayed play time standing around in lions arch.

I feel that something like this would cause immense bias in the opposite direction. People with less hours suddenly would have their opinions completely invalidated purely on the basis of fewer hours played than someone else.

That would change nothing, Pin an API to your forum signature and refer others to it instead if you are personally concerned about this 'predigree'.Also this game has multiple varying game-modes, including afking at DR.Afking at DR 24/7 365 days a year would net me an extravagant number of hours in game. However, I would be an expert on nothing but afking at DR.

This is the forums, people will form opinions based on what you input, so argue your case properly and perhaps, just perhaps they might take your comments seriously and not brush you off as new.

It wouldn't be helpful and would promote a different kind of toxicity on the forums which we really don't need. The down vote button is gone for similar reasons.

Also it doesn't matter how long someone has played if an idea/opinion is bad the idea/opinion is bad and people will assume they don't know what they are on about due to the degree that the idea is bad and vica verca for low hours but great ideas.

It also wouldnt help you in your personal case because a lot of your suggestions tend to be outlandish or controversial. It would just lead to people saying "how've you played X long and you still don't know this. Lol you must be bad" and things along those lines.

If you are concerned that your own participation be seen, post it in your signature.

@"Sigmoid.7082" said:It wouldn't be helpful and would promote a different kind of toxicity on the forums which we really don't need. The down vote button is gone for similar reasons.

Also it doesn't matter how long someone has played if an idea/opinion is bad the idea/opinion is bad and people will assume they don't know what they are on about due to the degree that the idea is bad and vica verca for low hours but great ideas.

It also wouldnt help you in your personal case because a lot of your suggestions tend to be outlandish or controversial. It would just lead to people saying "how've you played X long and you still don't know this. Lol you must be bad" and things along those lines.

Pretty spot on. They'd either label the people with a lot of hours bad/incapable or insult them for "having no life" etc...The people with less hours would still get the "You must be new" treatment so the end result is only a net negative all around.

The hours displayed wouldn’t necessarily be accurate. I post on an alt account so my hours played would show as very low. If you want to display your hours, put your hours played on your signature and update it regularly.

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:The hours displayed wouldn’t necessarily be accurate. I post on an alt account so my hours played would show as very low. If you want to display your hours, put your hours played on your signature and update it regularly.

Nobody would believe that if I did it lol

@Jumpin Lumpix.6108 said:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:The hours displayed wouldn’t necessarily be accurate. I post on an alt account so my hours played would show as very low. If you want to display your hours, put your hours played on your signature and update it regularly.

Then use a gw2efficiency link.People will still chime in with their opinions though, but time played =/= well rounded poster/suggestions.

Outrageous ideas do not suddenly become any less outrageous or impractical when stated by a veteran. There might also be the case of certain players having gained a certain reputation or post history over the years. Which might make other people take everything they have to say a little less seriously. This is not aimed at you of course and only a guess on my part why people might react a certain way.

Hours played doesn't really mean anything. I've been playing since day 1 of the headstart period (and the betas) and I've got thousands of hours in-game, but every so often I see a question from a new player (often apologising for having to ask something so simple) which I can't even understand, let alone answer because it's related to something I don't know much about - like the math behind attributes and how they affect skills.

Ask me how to get through a jumping puzzle or what we know about dragons and magic and I won't even need to look it up. Ask me how damage is calculated and I can tell you it's based on power or condition damage and some other stuff, or I could link you to the Wiki page but that's about it. And then there's other people who are the opposite, or know all about other things like how WvW matchups are determined.

On top of that I agree with the concern that it could lead to elitism or peoples posts (even ones which are purely opinions) being dismissed because they haven't been logged in as long as someone else in the topic. I've definitely seen that kind of thing happen on other forums - its one reason I was glad the forum 'rank' system only has 4 levels and you can't easily see the 'score' behind it.

(I have also seen it work well, for example I was on a role-playing forum where people were awarded martial arts style 'belts' to show their expertise in different areas and that was very effective both at showing who the more experienced people were and, more importantly, giving new members an incentive to make a real effort. Don't like having a white belt? Stop spamming I rush in and kill everyone with one swipe of my awesome ninja sword in every topic and write a character profile, start a story, write a really engaging fight scene which other people upvote because they enjoyed reading it, tutor a new player, etc. but that was a bit different because the forum was also a game. I've been on more forums than I care to remember and I've seen far more issues with rank systems causing elitism and unfair judgement against people than good examples of them working well.)

Finally I think in most cases it becomes clear fairly quickly who in a topic knows what they're talking about (especially if it's something with a definite right answer), and it's not always the person who has been playing the longest or even the same people all the time - as I said above everyone has things they know well and things they don't and everyone can make mistakes from time to time.

@"Jumpin Lumpix.6108" said:I'm getting tired of posting opinions to the forums only to inevitably have someone say "you must be new ect. ect." Or "you must not have been playing long" and then proceed to explain to me the basic mechanics of the game as thought they are being helpful.You must be new to the English language (It's etc. by the way), but that's enough for the English lesson ;)

As for your solution... People will still ignore it and say these types of things. People can barely read these days it seems, but in essence they want to say that so they will say it regardless. And when you point it out, they'll call you a scrub because after all that time "you still don't get it". So honestly, it's best to ignore them and consider them not worth talking to.

@Jumpin Lumpix.6108 said:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:The hours displayed wouldn’t necessarily be accurate. I post on an alt account so my hours played would show as very low. If you want to display your hours, put your hours played on your signature and update it regularly.

Edited for content:

Part of that might come from the way you present yourself here and in game.

On the forums it would appear you are more interested in stirring up controversial posts, while having an in game toon named ‘the complainer’ doesn’t help from an image perspective either.

When people see those who appear to be farming infractions, they are hesitant to take that person’s opinion with a significant level of sincerity.

@"Jumpin Lumpix.6108" said:I'm getting tired of posting opinions to the forums only to inevitably have someone say "you must be new ect. ect." Or "you must not have been playing long" and then proceed to explain to me the basic mechanics of the game as thought they are being helpful.Well, that mainly happens when someone posts something showing they do not in fact know those basic mechanics. Assuming such a poster is simply new and thus inexperienced is actually being considerate.

i don't want ppl to know ima no lifer tho

@"Jumpin Lumpix.6108" said:I'm getting tired of posting opinions to the forums only to inevitably have someone say "you must be new ect. ect." Or "you must not have been playing long" and then proceed to explain to me the basic mechanics of the game as thought they are being helpful.

As a solution I feel like next to our user names on every post it displays the total number of in game hours played for that account across all characters, so we can see not only who has seniority when speaking but also whether someone knows what they are talking about.

You could even throw In total hours played from gw1 and add that to the total as well, it couldn't hurt.

You know, you could simply write in each of your posts, "as a long time veteran of the game..."

However, it's none of anyone's business how much I play (or don't play). Plus, I don't think it's all that common for a cogent argument to worry about how much a previous poster plays, because it's largely irrelevant to whether they have an interesting idea or not. Plenty of high-hour players have bad ideas; plenty of new players have a useful perspective as near-outsiders.

@Jumpin Lumpix.6108 said:The only people who want this are those who are very opinionated.

FTFY

@"Jumpin Lumpix.6108" said:I'm getting tired of posting opinions to the forums only to inevitably have someone say "you must be new ect. ect." Or "you must not have been playing long" and then proceed to explain to me the basic mechanics of the game as thought they are being helpful.

As a solution I feel like next to our user names on every post it displays the total number of in game hours played for that account across all characters, so we can see not only who has seniority when speaking but also whether someone knows what they are talking about.

You could even throw In total hours played from gw1 and add that to the total as well, it couldn't hurt.

You assume that players with lots of playtime know what they are talking about while those with little playtime do not. This is absolutely false there is no correlation between playtime and knowledge of the game. There are many posters with lots of playtime that make ridiculous claims and deserve the "you must be new" comment for what they are typing.

Hours played in gw1 are an even more useless metric.

@"Jumpin Lumpix.6108" said:The only people who dont want this are those who.have low play time, and are very opinionated.

Define "low playtime". 10k hours? 5k hours?

@Jumpin Lumpix.6108 said:The only people who dont want this are those who.have low play time, and are very opinionated.That's demonstrably untrue. For example, not a single poster here (as of this post) supports the suggestion.

I think you'll find that there's less support for an idea when the poster includes inaccurate data or mistaken claims.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Jumpin Lumpix.6108 said:I'm getting tired of posting opinions to the forums only to inevitably have someone say "you must be new ect. ect." Or "you must not have been playing long" and then proceed to explain to me the basic mechanics of the game as thought they are being helpful.

As a solution I feel like next to our user names on every post it displays the total number of in game hours played for that account across all characters, so we can see not only who has seniority when speaking but also whether someone knows what they are talking about.

You could even throw In total hours played from gw1 and add that to the total as well, it couldn't hurt.

I think it can be worth including that info if it's relevant. For example if someone suggested a way to shake up the trait/specialisation system to make it more interesting I might well mention that I've been playing since launch and often make new characters to explain that I've had to deal with every version of the system - so when I'm comparing their idea to the pros and cons of previous systems I'm talking from personal experience and not just rumours I've heard on the forum about how awful it was when we had to do events to unlock traits.

Of course that doesn't necessarily mean I'm right. I could be remembering wrong (although I tend to look things up on the Wiki if my memory is fuzzy, which it usually is) and if I'm going off personal experience that will be highly subjective. But again that makes the context of me having played through it important, so people know it's subjective.

@Jumpin Lumpix.6108 said:The only people who dont want this are those who.have low play time, and are very opinionated.

Insulting everyone who disagrees with you is not a great way to gain support for your idea, no matter what it is.

Hours invested does not create a standard to measure the validity of ones statement.

They can and should be measured based on their own merit.

People play and learn in many different ways and paces.

I'> @BigBragg.8354 said:

Hours invested does not create a standard to measure the validity of ones statement.

This ^

I've seen plenty of players that still don't know what they're saying.

Would be better if the forums showed your AP, LI and LD

World of Warcraft forums show your AP for example

@"Danikat.8537" said:I think it can be worth including that info if it's relevant.Sure, but that should remain up to the poster to include (or not), especially because it isn't often that hours played matters.

In the case of "compared to how we had it in the past," sure, it's relevant. But we both have seen people misremember and insist on those incorrect details until shown solid evidence of their mistake. (Especially with regards to e.g. pre-raid, pre-DPS-meter elitism in dungeons or ease-of-gearing in GW1.)

In fact, in those situations, I rely more on the posting history of the player rather than how much they play. Some folks (including @"Danikat.8537") have a long track record of careful posting, with attention to detail, with researching details and backing up claims with solid evidence, etc. While others... let's just say, "no so much."

Nobody would believe that if I did it lol

What? Why would they doubt it?