Why are people not aware of Beta WvW Guild selection?

[ManiacMika.9851]

I see so many people confused that they are in a random team, not with their guild anymore etc.

Why is this happening?
Why are people not aware of that tab, that was advertised on July 26?
If you do WvW, if you have a WvW Guild, how could you possibly have missed this info that's being repeated over and over?
Could ArenaNet have advertised it better?
Why are people not aware of the scope of this beta, that it's mostly things not visible to players that are being monitored?
Why are people not understanding how a Team and an Alliance and a Guild work?
Why are people making me nervous by not only being ignorant, but being outraged that they are being ignorant?

I'm truly wondering what could have be done better?

[Kantharr.2308]

The only thing that I think Anet could have done better is display a huge message as soon as the player login saying "We would love to have you test the WvW World Restructuring Beta! Please go and select a guild for WvW."

 

If the player is still confused then that's on them.

Edited August 17, 2022 by Kantharr.2308

[Zepoolpe.9217]

Beats the solution they used with was to post a message on a forum that not everybody visit, and even when it is visited not everyone read every posts all the time.

That was a sloppy solution, but it matches Anet general performance level so no surprise there...

[Chichimec.9364]

1 hour ago, ManiacMika.9851 said:

...I'm truly wondering what could have be done better?

I've actually been wondering the same thing myself. There's Twitter, reddit, YouTube, the forum, the wiki, the loading screen, and more. Heck, there's even a FB page. There may be people who check all of those but there are likely also people who breeze right past all of them. So even if Anet put something on every possible media, there are probably still folks who would miss it.

[PhantomKitty.6520]

If my own guild hadn't told me about pre-selecting a guild prior to 11:59 PM on Thursday night, I don't think I would have made it into the same alliance with them.  The original post that mentions about the time frame is sort of buried by other (and in my mind, nonsensical) things on the GW2 front page.  And though I've been monitoring the forums, I didn't really catch sight of a post that mentions it.

Probably would have liked it better if the GW2 front page moving/flashing banners at the top of the page perhaps had a reminder of it.  Something to the effect of "Prepare for the WvW Beta Event Here!  What you should know!"  Then I could click on it and it would redirect me to a page of things I should/would like to know for a WvW Beta event. Things like: Preselecting a WvW guild, Tips, What's being looked at, etc.

I mean, I frequent the main site often enough (for news on the game and such), there's no way I'd miss a banner like that 1 week out, before any kind of release or test. I actually rely more on the main site rather than social media for Guild Wars 2 news, because a lot of my social media notifications get lost in the ether.  Same with e-mail notifications.  Thank goodness for Discord and my guild, though, or else I'd never have known about preselecting the guild for the event.

[Zok.4956]

2 hours ago, ManiacMika.9851 said:

I see so many people confused that they are in a random team, not with their guild anymore etc.

Why is this happening?
Why are people not aware of that tab, that was advertised on July 26?

Anet's communication sometimes feels like the Vogons announcing the demolishing of Earth: 😉

"There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now. ... What do you mean you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh, for heaven’s sake, mankind, it’s only four light years away, you know. I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that’s your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams."

 

 

[Zepoolpe.9217]

1 minute ago, Zok.4956 said:

Anet's communication sometimes feels like the Vogons announcing the demolishing of Earth: 😉

"There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now. ... What do you mean you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh, for heaven’s sake, mankind, it’s only four light years away, you know. I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that’s your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams."

+1 for the message

+10 for saying it by quoting Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

[PhantomKitty.6520]

57 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

Anet's communication sometimes feels like the Vogons announcing the demolishing of Earth: 😉

"There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now. ... What do you mean you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh, for heaven’s sake, mankind, it’s only four light years away, you know. I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that’s your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams."

 

 

LOL!!!  I shot coffee out of my nose with that one!  I could almost hear the Vogon tone of voice announcing that.  Thanks for that!

😁🤣

[LokiSaint.3457]

Anet never promotes wvw. There's legit nothing on their twitter as well 

[Ronin.4501]

3 hours ago, PhantomKitty.6520 said:

And though I've been monitoring the forums, I didn't really catch sight of a post that mentions it.

Erm, I posted the following a good 12 hours before the selection needed to be made.

 

[Chaba.5410]

2 hours ago, Ronin.4501 said:

Erm, I posted the following a good 12 hours before the selection needed to be made.

 

And I posted a link to your post on our guild discord after speaking in voice during our rally about this. We still had one guy who admitted to not paying attention after realizing he got placed on a different team. Lol.

[Ronin.4501]

32 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

And I posted a link to your post on our guild discord after speaking in voice during our rally about this. We still had one guy who admitted to not paying attention after realizing he got placed on a different team. Lol.

You can't hold everyone's hand.  We had one member of our guild do the same (and we had it posted both in Discord and guild MOTD). But it's only a week, and at least he took responsibility and wasn't complaining.

[Chaba.5410]

11 minutes ago, Ronin.4501 said:

You can't hold everyone's hand.  We had one member of our guild do the same (and we had it posted both in Discord and guild MOTD). But it's only a week, and at least he took responsibility and wasn't complaining.

Exactly. Neither can Anet. 🙂

Edited August 13, 2022 by Chaba.5410

[eridani.4158]

Because it wasn't advertised properly.

 

I've been repping my guild all week because I was told by friends to select my guild for the beta, yet I’m in a different server than them today. Turns out that, repping is not the same as selecting your guild, found it out today, so gotta be interesting playing with strangers for a week, I don't mind it that much, just enough for it to be my second post in a forum I never visit.

 

Why are players getting bogus or incomplete information?

Because they are getting it second hand.

 

Why are they getting it second hand instead of from the official source?

Because the official source lacks presence.

 

But it was on Reddit, Twitter, and the forums!

Well, not everyone reads the forum, that's a known fact, I'm more a ticktoker that any other social network, and reddit is popular in English but not as important for other languages.

 

But it was in the launcher!

Yes, the launcher that has an autologin feature that make it easy for you to miss it.

 

You are being annoying!, how can ANet reach everyone if none are on the same media?

Well they all play Guild Wars 2, I believe the perfect channel is obvious.

 

ANet already announces some stuff with an in game splash screen or in game mail, adding a banner to the character selection screen would be another option, imagine a window stating “You didn't select a guild for WvW Beta, would you like to join XYZ or put up with randoms?”, none is infallible by itself, but every option adds up. Abstracting from the game is the worst they could do, as there is no warranty that any other media will reach all players.

I sincerely hope this same mistake is not repeated for the actual release of alliances or any other future beta that features forced participation.

 

 

Edited August 13, 2022 by eridani.4158

[Luthan.5236]

Pretty simple: Send an ingame mail. They send this for like almost every minor stuff - at least for PvE related things like ... mentioning that there are fractals after you have completed a season 1 chapter of the story.

[Nyghtslave.6152]

48 minutes ago, Luthan.5236 said:

Pretty simple: Send an ingame mail. They send this for like almost every minor stuff - at least for PvE related things like ... mentioning that there are fractals after you have completed a season 1 chapter of the story.

It's so simple, obvious, and brilliant, you wonder why this hasn't been implemented

[Cronospere.8143]

9 hours ago, PhantomKitty.6520 said:

If my own guild hadn't told me about pre-selecting a guild prior to 11:59 PM on Thursday night, I don't think I would have made it into the same alliance with them.  The original post that mentions about the time frame is sort of buried by other (and in my mind, nonsensical) things on the GW2 front page.  And though I've been monitoring the forums, I didn't really catch sight of a post that mentions it.

Probably would have liked it better if the GW2 front page moving/flashing banners at the top of the page perhaps had a reminder of it.  Something to the effect of "Prepare for the WvW Beta Event Here!  What you should know!"  Then I could click on it and it would redirect me to a page of things I should/would like to know for a WvW Beta event. Things like: Preselecting a WvW guild, Tips, What's being looked at, etc.

I mean, I frequent the main site often enough (for news on the game and such), there's no way I'd miss a banner like that 1 week out, before any kind of release or test. I actually rely more on the main site rather than social media for Guild Wars 2 news, because a lot of my social media notifications get lost in the ether.  Same with e-mail notifications.  Thank goodness for Discord and my guild, though, or else I'd never have known about preselecting the guild for the event.

Exactly this. 

I read all of those things. Yet because there are soo many things going on. Festival of Four Winds for example. I completely forgot to do this. 

Time flies.. 

Also. When you havent done an important thing ingame (like weapons that havent had their stats selected.) It is a full annoying icon in your screen. That could have fixed a lot here. 

Edited August 13, 2022 by Cronospere.8143

[Zok.4956]

2 hours ago, eridani.4158 said:

But it was in the launcher!

Yes, the launcher that has an autologin feature that make it easy for you to miss it.

And also: If players are not interested in the Beta-Event, why would they care and read a post about the WvW-Beta?

Anet did not really communicate clearly that participation in the WvW-Beta is not voluntarily (like it was with the PvE-Betas) but mandatory for all WvW-players (that are playing in the beta-week).

Sure, "we" know it (from previous WvW-betas), but it was not really communicated well.

 

[captrowdy.9561]

Funny this is a beta. This has been some of the feedback every time and nothing has changed. 

[Labjax.2465]

I think a reliable way to communicate it would be to have a window where you have to choose a guild to join before entering WvW, or no guild if you had none you wanted to be paired with, and this can be done even after it's started, but you can only choose once. Ideally, this also tells you where people on your friends list are if they already picked, so you can make sure to go where they are if you're doing it by pug.

Cause it's not just about how and where you communicate it (in-game, out of game, etc.) it's also that people can/will show up whenever. There's no guarantee they log in consistently to begin with, much less are following what's going on, much less understand how it's supposed to work.

Basically, take whatever your expectations are for people knowing what to do and go lower. Then take that and keep going lower and lower and lower... this is not a diss of people, mind you. I don't see it that way. It's more like... imagine you are in a foreign country and you are wandering about trying to figure out what to do and where to go. It's all new and confusing and overwhelming, and you may be worried you're going to do it wrong and something bad will happen to you or you'll get in trouble. That's what it can be like trying to navigate a new system/interface.

Then your tour guide shows up and relief floods you. For this, a tutorial or very in-your-face informative prompt is like the tour guide. Its job is to reassure you that you just gotta stay with it and do what it says and you'll be fine.

[Chaba.5410]

1 hour ago, Labjax.2465 said:

it's also that people can/will show up whenever. There's no guarantee they log in consistently to begin with, much less are following what's going on, much less understand how it's supposed to work.

It's not practical at all to worry about every person who shows up "whenever" though.  This is because teams have to be formed out of the active playerbase at some point before reset.  So far for these betas your choice of guild from the last beta is stored and you don't have to even log in to re-select unless you want to change your association.  So now we're talking months ago where someone was given a chance to pick their guilds.

This isn't to say that these "whenever" players are not accounted for though.  A player who hasn't logged in in a while and becomes inactive in WvW will not count at all towards team formation.  They only start counting again when they log in and play some WvW.  In those cases they will be given a chance to pick which non-Full team they want to join.

As for this beta, the announcement was given on the blog a full two weeks earlier.  How much time ahead of time is supposed to be given?  That said, I think it's fair to have some sort of in-game mail announcement too as the date approaches since things like the blog get buried.

[Labjax.2465]

8 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

It's not practical at all to worry about every person who shows up "whenever" though.  This is because teams have to be formed out of the active playerbase at some point before reset.  So far for these betas your choice of guild from the last beta is stored and you don't have to even log in to re-select unless you want to change your association.  So now we're talking months ago where someone was given a chance to pick their guilds.

This isn't to say that these "whenever" players are not accounted for though.  A player who hasn't logged in in a while and becomes inactive in WvW will not count at all towards team formation.  They only start counting again when they log in and play some WvW.  In those cases they will be given a chance to pick which non-Full team they want to join.

As for this beta, the announcement was given on the blog a full two weeks earlier.  How much time ahead of time is supposed to be given?  That said, I think it's fair to have some sort of in-game mail announcement too as the date approaches since things like the blog get buried.

I mean, I think we're talking about two different priorities here. One is the practicality of the system as they have currently designed it and are trying to carry it out. The other is the practicality of working with an MMO playerbase and how people interact with MMOs specifically and user interfaces more generally.

If the priority here is to work with those who are paying attention and just accept it if it messes up some people who aren't, that's fine, that's the priority they are choosing and dealing with those it messes up is the tradeoff. But it is a tradeoff and will have consequences considering it's not in flow with the typical, more flexible mode of MMO activity.

Does that make sense or am I being too vague?

[Voyant.1327]

Legitimately no notice about it in game and their menus aren't intuitive enough for people to stumble onto things like this.

Map chat telling other players isn't exactly a surefire method to a successful test. 

[Chaba.5410]

14 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

I mean, I think we're talking about two different priorities here. One is the practicality of the system as they have currently designed it and are trying to carry it out. The other is the practicality of working with an MMO playerbase and how people interact with MMOs specifically and user interfaces more generally.

If the priority here is to work with those who are paying attention and just accept it if it messes up some people who aren't, that's fine, that's the priority they are choosing and dealing with those it messes up is the tradeoff. But it is a tradeoff and will have consequences considering it's not in flow with the typical, more flexible mode of MMO activity.

Does that make sense or am I being too vague?

Yea it makes sense.  I feel like my whole post though is about working with an MMO playerbase in how notification is given for these betas and what instructions players should follow.

Regarding how people interact generally with the user interface, these are live tests of an unreleased feature as it is being developed in bits and pieces.  We don't even have the ability to create alliances of guilds yet.  All current user interface design is a temporary placeholder.  This is why I feel it's important to have the in-game mail in addition to the blog.  Maybe the in-game mail can be sent as soon as the WvW beta guild selection list is made available.

That said, it's still not practical to try to design some form of hand-holding for every casual player.  You said yourself there's no guarantee when they log in.  Even if the user interface is perfect, there's no guarantee that a player is going to use it until it's too late to select.  Even if you sent in-game mail, there's no telling when someone will open and read it.  All that can be done is a "best effort".

[Voyant.1327]

On 8/14/2022 at 12:59 PM, Chaba.5410 said:

Yea it makes sense.  I feel like my whole post though is about working with an MMO playerbase in how notification is given for these betas and what instructions players should follow.

Regarding how people interact generally with the user interface, these are live tests of an unreleased feature as it is being developed in bits and pieces.  We don't even have the ability to create alliances of guilds yet.  All current user interface design is a temporary placeholder.  This is why I feel it's important to have the in-game mail in addition to the blog.  Maybe the in-game mail can be sent as soon as the WvW beta guild selection list is made available.

That said, it's still not practical to try to design some form of hand-holding for every casual player.  You said yourself there's no guarantee when they log in.  Even if the user interface is perfect, there's no guarantee that a player is going to use it until it's too late to select.  Even if you sent in-game mail, there's no telling when someone will open and read it.  All that can be done is a "best effort".

Well summarized.

Tbh all they need to do is a red notification on the WvW page like they do with the Guild or Trading Post.

Forces players to actively dismiss it, aka at least look at it. In game mail would be encouraged but just a red exclamation would do the trick.