ArenaNet Forum Chats Coming!

[mercury ranique.2170]

I wonder what time it will be. When it comes to attention from devs, it goes a lot towards the NA-community. It is even hard to ever encounter a dev on the EU-servers. So would be great if it would be in the EU-evening. (so the morning for Arenanet)

[Zedek.8932]

Excelsior.

Mh, I am not sure how this could work.Have you ever chatted with 5 people at the same time, e.g. a Twitch chat? Now imagine 50 people at once. Or 67. You will never get a response, and if it's a "real time chat" as stated, it's just a big mess of text I guess or super duper long waiting time. I'd rather have some sort of "ticket" feature: Ask 1 question and get a "real" answer of several lines. And not: "Who yells most wins and gets several questions answered". I have no idea how it's actually designed though honestly, but "real time chat" sounds pretty much like.. a regular chat. And "threads", eh? So it's like "chatrooms"? But then, the waiting time applies, and yet again, when the question(s) never get answered due to time problems, I am not sure if I'd try for several weeks. (Mind: The last time I was reporting forum issues I had no response until now, over a month, on two tickets until I asked Gaile on the forums directly. Less foosball please in the office!)

[Ardid.7203]

This is just awesome. Thank you a thousand times for this initiative!

[Svarty.8019]

@"Gaile Gray.6029" said:we’ll be talking about the game as it is at the current time, rather than focusing on future development,While I welcome the initiative, I think it'll be entirely impossible to restrict the agenda to the, "game as it is at the current time". Good luck with it though, I think it's a positive step.

[BugsBanni.1397]

I'd like to see Lawton Campbell, he got promoted or something, right? I'd like to know what he is currently doing and what's up with this involvement in the API :)

[Nebilim.5127]

@GDchiaScrub.3241 said:

@"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:I'll be honest, I'm a big ambivalent about this.

On one hand, I'd love the chance to pick developer brains to see their lines of thought for design choices.

On the other hand, I can see many other things that devs would be better off doing than biweekly AMAs.

I would love more well timed AMAs than the day of release so folks could ask informed questions, but I was thinking more "the week after a release". Biweekly feels a bit much.

Yes, bi weekly is a bit much. Once a month at least, since I would rather have the developers well....

developing

and let the idea(s) sink in for the month.

You guys are making a mountain of a molehill I'm sure dedicating 2 hours every 2 weeks isn't going to cut development time. People have downtime in all of kinds of work, and this is STILL WORK. Communication, transparency and involvement with your costumer base foster good relation and improve the health and longevity of the company.Happy communicated clients=better word of mouth=more sales

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

@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.

A single post on Reddit is structurally an alternative to creation of a whole new sub-forum for each specific AMA session, and even then Reddit is vastly structurally superior (simply because forum topic doesn't have structure at all, it's a simple stream).

If you want to see what a clustercharr looks like, go

here

and tell me how many responses from Gaile Gray are there. On Reddit, I would find all of them in approximately five seconds.

You can always use the 'Jump to next Dev post' feature here on the forum. (I'm assuming you aren't looking for forum poster answers to specific questions. I also assume most of the Dev 'answers' will quote the pertinent 'question'. Of course, assuming can be dangerous.)

[Lucius.1028]

Great, thanks for the notice.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"Daddicus.6128" said:An idea for you: Create a thread for ideas (only) for this AFC .

If there's an individual folder for each session, then one thread per question is probably going to work out well. People can easily see the question in the title and whether ANet has responded or not.

Encourage people to not debate within that thread. If there needs to be a debate, create a new one and link to it.On the surface, that sounds like a good idea, to keep focus on the question.

However, it seems likely to me that some questions could use clarification and/or brainstorming, so "debate" is sometimes important, too.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:How about a discussion of style in armor and outfits.Possible topics1) buttcapes vs sleek2) trench coats on medium armor vs short jackets or no jacket at all.3) mixing styles in new armors designs. That is, in future armors make sets that look like they belong to a different armor weight. eg. Heavy appearing armor for light and mediums, light appearing armor for heavy and medium, medium appearing armor for light and heavy.4) simple pants for light armor females.5) for outfits, ability to show our armor helm like we could with gw1 costumes.6) outfits that aren’t fancy. Like the new outfits from town clothing that look like regular clothing, not fancy party clothes.

I'd love to see someone from the design team prepared to walk us through their process. Right now, it's a black box to us, and so people keep insisting that it's easy to convert outfits into armor pieces or that "clipping is already bad, so spend little time worrying about it and let us decide" or "armor shouldn't take 9 months". It seems to me that someone at ANet can do better explaining than "because it just does."

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"Gaile Gray.6029" said:Bi-weekly ArenaNet Forum ChatsOn a bi-weekly basis, an individual dev or team of devs will join the forums

Presumably you mean semi-monthly (2x/month). "Biweekly" is one of those ambiguous words in English that (today) means either "2x per week" or "every two weeks". Given the community's tendency to obsess over phrasing, perhaps it would be good to clarify that y'all mean the latter.

for a few hours to engage with you in real timein a two-hour event,Do you know if those "two hours" are going to be limited to usual ANet business hours, i.e. starting no sooner than 9 am Pacific and no latter than 3 pm? Naturally, it's impossible to schedule any given even at a time convenient for everyone in our global community. Still, I think it would be useful to set expectations sooner rather than later.

---

Is this initiative planned to go for the entire year? We all (including Mike O'Brien) know that it's really difficult to maintain an aggressive schedule and twice a month is about 20 extra sessions per year compared to 2017, even if it's just 1-2 devs versus a cast of dozen(s). This seems like another opportunity to set expectations, e.g. "we plan to do this for at least 3 months at which point we'll review the level of engagement" versus "we plan to do at least 20 sessions in 2018" versus "we plan to stick to twice a month except during major holidays or emergencies" etc.

[Ghos.1326]

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:As we look to the start of a new year, we want to let you know about an exciting new initiative we’re going to offer here on the forums: Bi-weekly ArenaNet Forum Chats with Guild Wars 2 developers or development teams. These chats will be our take on the concept of a developer AMA.

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.

As always, we’ll be talking about the game as it is at the current time, rather than focusing on future development, although it’s always possible that some predictive info will be shared. Also, it goes without saying that in a two-hour event, it’s likely that we won’t be able to get to every thread that is created, nor answer every question that may be raised. However, the benefit of players and developers sharing ideas during these sessions could have far-reaching benefits, and we hope you’ll join in!

First order of business will be setting up a guest list. So, please share your ideas for dev or dev team participants. If you would also give a little idea of why you’d like that person or team to take part, that would be very helpful, as well.

We look forward to seeing you as participants in the AFCs!

Definitely the balance team. I think it would be crucial and very beneficial for the game if they participated on this.

[Chiltonium.7643]

Was just wondering why Anet didnt do something like this when the big ones like WoW and even the small ones like Neverwinter did!

[Maressa.3509]

On behalf of all roleplayers, I ask that we get some time to pick the brains of the folks in charge of lore. We have so many questions!!!

[DeceiverX.8361]

MO and Karl. Together. On Profession design.

The game's in serious need of profession guidance and reworks, and I'd at least like to be able to point out the fact it needs a way higher priority than it has gotten in the past five years.

[Arlette.9684]

How do you plan on incorporating such feature in the forum?Obviously chat room is out of the question as we're likely to get Twitch level of spam. However having people being able to create an endless amount of threads in a sub-forum section sounds like a lost cause too. Maybe you should consider polling forum users, the week before the AMA, about topics of discussion and picking top 3-5 and making threads accordingly, then rinse and repeat. It would certainly spare you from answering questions that are all over the place.

@Gaile Gray.6029

[Meetshield.1756]

Balance team would be nice, but I understand they likely wouldn't want to be slammed by us all saying HEY fix my class :)

WvW community feels often ignored, many players only play the game for WvW, its what makes GW2 unique imho, so some attention to that would be refreshing.

[Robj.6815]

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:As we look to the start of a new year, we want to let you know about an exciting new initiative we’re going to offer here on the forums: Bi-weekly ArenaNet Forum Chats with Guild Wars 2 developers or development teams. These chats will be our take on the concept of a developer AMA.

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.

As always, we’ll be talking about the game as it is at the current time, rather than focusing on future development, although it’s always possible that some predictive info will be shared. Also, it goes without saying that in a two-hour event, it’s likely that we won’t be able to get to every thread that is created, nor answer every question that may be raised. However, the benefit of players and developers sharing ideas during these sessions could have far-reaching benefits, and we hope you’ll join in!

First order of business will be setting up a guest list. So, please share your ideas for dev or dev team participants. If you would also give a little idea of why you’d like that person or team to take part, that would be very helpful, as well.

We look forward to seeing you as participants in the AFCs!

This will be fantastic! Can't wait to see how it all shakes out

[Fenom.9457]

This sounds like a great idea, I'm interested in how it turns out...

[Daddicus.6128]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Daddicus.6128" said:An idea for you: Create a thread for ideas (only) for this AFC .

If there's an individual folder for each session, then one thread per question is probably going to work out well. People can easily see the question in the title and whether ANet has responded or not.

Encourage people to not debate within that thread. If there needs to be a debate, create a new one and link to it.On the surface, that sounds like a good idea, to keep focus on the question.

However, it seems likely to me that some questions could use clarification and/or brainstorming, so "debate" is sometimes important, too.

Agree on both counts. However, the determination of whether there will be a second one will be fixed in stone by whether the first one works. I can see a lot of ways this idea could go south. On the other hand, it has a LOT of potential to help them out.

Personally, if they do it, I would like to see brainstorming even about the thread of ideas before the first session. I put all of the things I could think of in that post, but with thousands of other posters, I suspect I've just started picking away at the Arctic Sea with an icepick.

[Orpheal.8263]

I'd like to see the Devs responsible for Character Progression in the AMA, want to know, what their facit after now two Expansions is, what they think, did work out, what they think did not work out really well and needs improvement over time, and in which direction the game is headed in regard of Character Progresison in the future, now that there are Elite Specs and a Mastery System -their said FOUNDATION - both in my view far away still of making full usage of the potential that these systems offer, especially if both elements would get merged together, would E-Specs benefit alot from putting both systems together, to make out of E-Specs more something, what i've spoken about back in the past when you made the CDI about Character Progression.

If everything we have so far now is still only like a basic foundation, then I'd find it very interestign to hear about, how Anet plans on the future to build this foundation up with more DEPTH and improved continous Character Progression, other than only adding every 2-3 years from now on a new set of E-Specs.

Because if that is everything, then this would be very disappointing to see.I'd like to hear for example also from the devs responsible for Character Progression, how long they intend to add more Elite Specs.They surely must have set themself some kind of "limit" somewhere. 5-6 makes sense (or at least wishful), because with that amount you have basically everything done, that is possible for every class, without repeating something somewhere, while making still sure, that each spec should feel unique somehow

Just saying, theres so much in regard of character progression, that could be still done with GW2.. I know, the game is already 5 years old, but when it comes to Character Progression, i still get the feeling, as if this game barely even touched this segment

[DeWolfe.2174]

Suggestion, how about on Reddit instead? Threading on Reddit is better than on this format of a forum. Also, this is so heavily moderated that it doesn't allow for a spirited conversation and openness.

[Donari.5237]

@DeWolfe.2174 said:Suggestion, how about on Reddit instead? Threading on Reddit is better than on this format of a forum. Also, this is so heavily moderated that it doesn't allow for a spirited conversation and openness.

They've done Reddit AMAs. Many people have found this inconvenient. So now they are offering linear threads on their official forums for those of us who prefer to follow a discussion in order (and don't have Reddit accounts and thus cannot participate there). It's an experiment, no doubt, but one worth doing imo. I'm looking forward to it. I think in five years of heavy forum use I've fallen foul of the mods for how I phrased things ... once? So I know I can keep my comments constructive even while being spirited and open. Hopefully enough others can as well that we get some good dev commentary far more easily found in the future than on Reddit.

[juhani.5361]

No real suggestions, but an enthusiastic thumbs up! I'm really looking forward to this :)

[Ayumi Spender.1082]

@DeWolfe.2174 said:Suggestion, how about on Reddit instead? Threading on Reddit is better than on this format of a forum. Also, this is so heavily moderated that it doesn't allow for a spirited conversation and openness.

I would've been one for Reddit if I understood the horrid layout of that place.