ArenaNet Forum Chats Coming!

[Shikigami.4013]

It is announced a being for "developers or development teams" specifially, but I would like to take the opportunity to say that I would love to see something like this for the more serious topic of "game security". Recently there has been a great thread like it asking for feedback about a marketing topic (a promotional video to be specific) and I feel like game security is pretty much hidden under a blanket at Arenanet. Having someone from game security come to the forum from time to time and update the players about what is going on and how effective the actions that are being taken are would be nice.

Obviously this should not be about topics like "how do we catch cheaters" as this would be counterproductive. Maybe more like coming out and letting the playerbase know what generally is being done against people not following the rules.

Answering with some anonymized statistics would also be nice. I know you have some "privacy" issues with straight out telling the players which accounts were banned, although everyone participating on the forum has to do so by revealing his accountname and an accountname is not part of a players "privacy" (I think technically the account belongs to you anyway), but it should be possible to state some numbers/percentages to let people know that their reports do not go directly into the wastebin. Like "Last month we received 2330 botting reports of which we were able to check 72% within the first 48 hours. A total of 1855 accounts were not confirmed to be currently breaking the rules and have been flagged for a followup-observation. 380 received a suspension and 85 were banned."

I know that many players will not even consider reporting because of a "nothing will be done anyway" feeling. Something like this, even if only once a month, would stop naysayers from chanting the "they are not going to do anything" song.

[Artemis Thuras.8795]

Some topics/teams that should make regular appearances:

balance dev/team,latest/next living world team,raid team,fractal team,wvw team,pvp team.

Some other devs that would be good to have a conversation with (though could be less frequently):

story/lore writers,game engine devs ( if there are any) - particularly regarding things like skill lag in wvw, and optimization/gpu utilisation,rewards/economy team.

[Fatemaster.3590]

After the marketing thread I'd like to see more of Sibs, but I also wouldn't mind to see Jeff Grubb do one if he's still lurking around.

[Menadena.7482]

@OmskCamill.6412 said:

@X T D.6458 said:Yay no more trying to navigate the visual clusterkitten that is reddit :s

Are you serious? AMA itself is a brilliant idea and a step in the right direction, but a ribbon-like forum format (as opposed branch-like that Reddit uses) is specifically abysmal for AMA purposes. You don't get a notification when someone answered to your comment, and most importantly, you don't see questions and responses close to each other. When you see a question, you have no other choice but to scroll through the rest of the topic to find out whether the question was answered.

Actually, if they quoted you you are notified in your inbox.

The tree structure is helpful for some people but others hate it. I like to see all new posts and find a tree a kitteny way to read a forum.

The problem is people being banned but that is a problem on any forum.

[Mysticjedi.6053]

I would love to hear devs current philosophy of design for classes. Specifically Guardian.

[Ashamir.9574]

The WvW dev team.To this day I'm not sure if they actually exist, which is a sad thing.

[ReaverKane.7598]

This should be pinned...It might be helpful, given the nature of forums.

Also it might be interesting to open a new (pinned) thread for people to post questions in advance of the actual "AMA"?Just questions, things outside that scope should be deleted.

[Lonami.2987]

@Blaeys.3102 said:If there is any group or individuals that could be assembled regarding the topic of guilds and guild related activities/support, that would get my vote.

This.

Guilds are in a really desperate situation, and they need urgent attention.

[Embered.5089]

By forum chat do you mean that we're going to have to refresh every second to see new posts?

[Burnfall.9573]

Is this going to be a chat forums about discussing solutions and implementing them or it's going to be about talking about what is wrong with this game?

Cause if it is about talking about wrong with this game; we've already accomplished that 5 years+ ago.

' Words are meaningless without intent and follow through '

that's all

[PaladinVII.1647]

This is good news! I request someone from the WvW team and from the Balance team be present. In all the previous AMA's for Living World releases, WvW questions have been pushed to the side with the reason given that there was no one from the WvW team present. This is a chance to amend that. Please, please, please make it happen!

[Spurnshadow.3678]

@Wwefan.4982 said:Mike Z would be an obvious person because he is now Game Director depending on the topic the leader of the development team. Also if possible MO just because he started the great initiative of developer AMAs.

Yeah, MO did do a lot of the initiative, but I found it to be total lip service as almost nothing came out of them, especially in the WvW realm. Changes that did come were years later. There's an obvious resurgence to engage the community, and I'm sure MZ has something to do with it. This is encouraging. There was just a big PvP thing that happened where Ben took a lot of time to answer many questions and seemed to consider many ideas. The difference will be known in the future as to whether effective, smart, well thought out changes are actually implemented. Also, a noticeable difference between the MO and MZ engagements is that the devs are engaging more with MZ. MO's AMAs were more threads to dump your ideas and things were not really engaged with.

[TheGrimm.5624]

Appreciate this. Finding information on reddit versus the official forums has been a sore subject especially overtime.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

This sounds like a step in the right direction, primarily when it come to PVP and conquest balancing.

Hopefully we can get some additional back and forth about why certain things are the way they are, and whether or not changes can be made that benefit the devs as well as the players.

That all being said, I hope that the discourse actually leads to changes being implemented .

[Orpheal.8263]

Hopefully this leads just into more general conversations with the devs resonsible for various things over how to improve things that the majority of people things withn the discussions, needs changes, without that they start feelign again ,that every "word too much whiuch they msay say" could be seen as a false promise and leads to the whole thign gettign blown up again and stopped, before it it a real chance to start at all and tun into a useful conversation tool that can bring devs and the playerbase in a right way closer together....

Thats the only thing I hope for this here. There community complained already long enough, that theconversations with us should increase, to the point, that we pulled even out sereval times over the last years Mo out of its dark Dev Realm to appear because of the build up toxity in the forums that comes naturally, when peopel feel being ingored for too long and the frustratino that comes with it, when you see to alot of things absolutely no Dev responses, when responses from them could in fact be in may ways and times so helpful to the original poste,r or the generation discussion as feedback that only they can give from their very own view angle they only they can have, which simply other forum posters can't give, because they are oftenly also too biased towards their own opinions which oftenly also are affected by the choice of class thy play or other reasons.Likre beign said, to get into contact with the playerbase in a more constant way every few weeks, is absolutely a way into the right direction and its what people want to have in an OFFICIAL FORUM, that you can get in tough with the devs here and have discussions with them here - and not in some kind of meaninless unofficual palces, like reddit, only because these sides provide some kind of "features", that shouldn't be too hard to implement into this fresh new forum as well, if the forum website engine does allow it, or you simply have the skillful website programmers to implement them if needed so much.

Can't wait on the first Forum Chat to happen and to see, what will come from this in the future.

[Frostfang.5109]

I'd like character design artists to join in, to discuss character creation and why it has stalled. Why are there so little to no new racial features released such as horns and fur-patterns? Why only goofy hairstyles for male charr and one face with different coloring released and calling it three? Why no new faces at all in over a year?

(Making only charr examples is just to simplify, ofc this goes for all non-human races. Humans got a total update with PoF.)

[sorudo.9054]

we really need less fluff on outfits, way to many buttcapes, shafts and full helmets.i want to see hoods with hair, armor that follows the body shape and clothing that has a clear but simple design.

[Rezzet.3614]

Pls people dont be salty bebies, everyone wanted this, dont kill it being hostile

[marelooke.9708]

Meh, would have preferred they just stuck to Reddit, right tool for the job and all that.

[Burnfall.9573]

@Rezzet.3614 said:Pls people dont be salty bebies, everyone wanted this, dont kill it being hostile

This isn't the first time where Anet 'had the talk' with us and guess where it all ended up?

(I'm sure you are not new to the game and clearly know the answer to that)

Saltiness is expected when matters were ignore, weren't addressed and weren't implemented

'If you were brave enough to make the decisions, be brave to face its consequences'

[Rezzet.3614]

@Burnfall.9573 said:

@Rezzet.3614 said:Pls people dont be salty bebies, everyone wanted this, dont kill it being hostile

This isn't the first time where Anet 'had the talk' with us and guess where it all ended up?

(I'm sure you are not new to the game and clearly know the answer to that)

Saltiness is expected when matters were ignore, weren't addressed and weren't implemented

'If you were brave enough to make the decisions, be brave to face its consequences'

Doesnt mean we should just give up and not give it our best though.

There will be obligatory trap questions though

[Adriaen.7895]

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:The GW2 AFC series will begin in February. On a bi-weekly basis, an individual dev or team of devs will join the forums for a few hours to engage with you in real time on the topics you care about. You can create a thread to ask a question, give feedback, express a concern, or share a kudo. Or you can join an existing thread to share your thoughts on the topic at hand.

February is almost over, no AFC seen so far. Did the idea die?

[Gaile Gray.6029]

@Adriaen.7895 said:

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:The GW2 AFC series will begin in February. On a bi-weekly basis, an individual dev or team of devs will join the forums for a few hours to engage with you in real time on the topics you care about. You can create a thread to ask a question, give feedback, express a concern, or share a kudo. Or you can join an existing thread to share your thoughts on the topic at hand.

February is almost over, no AFC seen so far. Did the idea die?

AFCs definitely will be proceeding! We'll have more info soon. :)

[Wuselknusel.4082]

Will those devs spread out to all subforums?

[Arkham Creed.7358]

I would love to be able to chat with whoever is currently in charge of revenant development. Not balance; DEVELOPMENT. Balance is one thing but a lot of people in the rev sub forum feel the class has some core design issues (including objectively missing features) that need to be addressed, and I'd love to have the chance to pick that person's brain and share some ideas directly. Aside from that...

....I solved capes. Yeah, the issue with capes; solved it about....two/three years ago. So there is that...