Dev Celebration - October 6, 2017

[Gaile Gray.6029]

As has been a tradition over the last many months, we will be having a Dev Celebration on Reddit tomorrow. The topic: Path of Fire!

Join us around 2:00 PM on Friday, October 6, 2017, as members of the ArenaNet Team join in to chat with you, answer your questions, and generally celebrate the launch of our expansion pack!

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

I wish I understood how Reddit works better. I always have to wait until it's over to go through the thousand posts, and find the Dev nuggets.

Thanks for the announcement.

[Donari.5237]

I wanted to keep playing the game, but noooo, you have to have a Guild Chat AND an AMA to fill the afternoon! :D

[Gaile Gray.6029]

Reddit -- you just grab the comment that you want to join, click reply, and post. If there are a lot of comments yours will sort into a batch, but it should post up there just fine.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

I would never want to post, just read. But, it's so confusing when the posts are moving around, hiding and such. One really has to wait until it's all over, and then open all the trees to find the all Dev posts (in context).

It's a shame that even with a new forum, specially chosen...that the major Dev interaction opportunities are still on Reddit. :anguished:

[TexZero.7910]

@holodoc.5748 said:Now this is something that has always bugged me - why Reddit? Why Reddit instead of, for example, these new shiny forums?

Because old fashion forums are apparently not suited well for Q&A despite them being used for such since the earliest of forum days.

[RoseofGilead.8907]

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:I would never want to post, just read. But, it's so confusing when the posts are moving around, hiding and such. One really has to wait until it's all over, and then open all the trees to find the all Dev posts (in context).

It's a shame that even with a new forum, specially chosen...that the major Dev interaction opportunities are still on Reddit. :anguished:

Usually, someone (usually a bot account on reddit) will post a link that compiles links to all of the questions that receive dev responses. This saves you from having to open each comment tree.

[Randulf.7614]

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:I would never want to post, just read. But, it's so confusing when the posts are moving around, hiding and such. One really has to wait until it's all over, and then open all the trees to find the all Dev posts (in context).

It's a shame that even with a new forum, specially chosen...that the major Dev interaction opportunities are still on Reddit. :anguished:

I am in agreement. I find it confusing and an unintelligible way to read and follow interactions. I had hoped given the increased interaction with us since the new forum launched it would translate across to these, but I too will wait for a summary since there is often interesting info to come out of these sessions.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Yes, I know about the bot. But, it doesn't show the context always, and you have to wait until the AMA is over to get all the Dev posts, anyway.

[Chadramar.8156]

Add my voice to the ones who ask why this is done on Reddit instead of here. I don't like that site for a variety of reasons, and I find it irritating at best when devs use it or Facebook or whatever for community interaction, contests etc. instead of their own websites.

[Gaile Gray.6029]

I do understand the question about "Why there, and not here?" I am going to propose an alternative idea for us to try sometime. But for the present event, we'll go with Reddit, and in fact if my idea doesn't fly, we'll stay there in the future, too. :)

[WolfsFang.2301]

For the people who ask "why reddit", try sorting through 500+ comments on a forum layout. Reddit makes it manageable to deal with a large amount of comments.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Well, if the new forums had the feature the old forums had (up/down arrows on Dev posts), there would be no need to sort through 500+ comments.
I guess Reddit just removes some of the need to quote, though quoting doesn't seem that difficult (albeit, more so with multiple quotes).

As noted before, it's manageable after the AMA is all over, I suppose. But, a real headache while it's active, as the posts are not chronological, and can move.

[RoseofGilead.8907]

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

As noted before, it's manageable after the AMA is all over, I suppose. But, a real headache while it's active, as the posts are not chronological, and can move.

You can sort the posts on a reddit topic by date and time (newest to oldest or oldest to newest), which can help. It's still a pain to read as all the comments are coming in, though.

[TexZero.7910]

@WolfsFang.2301 said:For the people who ask "why reddit", try sorting through 500+ comments on a forum layout. Reddit makes it manageable to deal with a large amount of comments.

Call me old if you must, but forums work just as well for it. Heck they were designed for it in mind and have been used as such since the very early BBS days.

Now then, the issue i can see when it comes to ANets specific forums, is....well they're slow. That's as nice as i can put it. If mass traffic occurs these forums usually grind to a halt.

[Cronos.6532]

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:I wish I understood how Reddit works better. I always have to wait until it's over to go through the thousand posts, and find the Dev nuggets.

Thanks for the announcement.

/r/Gw2devtrack has every ArenaNet employee comment. Each thread also has a bot that updates it with comments. You can also sort threads into q&a mode which might help. It's really not difficult, though, the ANet answer is almost always directly below the question.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Sigh. I know about the Dev Tracker, I know about the bots. It doesn't help when the thread is active. Those are all fine after the fact...sort of, though often you only get the Dev post, without the preceding context.

Thanks for trying, though. = )

[MedievalThings.5417]

Yeah, I get that a lot of people use social media. BUT, why even have an official game forum is nothing ever happens on it. Everyone always posts to reddit/twitter/other and we wait for kind players to copy/paste that stuff to the OFFICIAL game forums.

[Dante.1763]

@Ubi.4136 said:Yeah, I get that a lot of people use social media. BUT, why even have an official game forum is nothing ever happens on it. Everyone always posts to reddit/twitter/other and we wait for kind players to copy/paste that stuff to the OFFICIAL game forums.

This is one of the games i know that does that too, and its really annoying. I /hate/ reddit for numerous reasons so i avoid it like the plague so i dont see what gets posted there till someone posts it here, thankfully they do.

[OriOri.8724]

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:I would never want to post, just read. But, it's so confusing when the posts are moving around, hiding and such. One really has to wait until it's all over, and then open all the trees to find the all Dev posts (in context).

It's a shame that even with a new forum, specially chosen...that the major Dev interaction opportunities are still on Reddit. :anguished:

Once you get the hang of it, I feel that Reddit is the most intuitive forum to navigate, period. Then again, I do use a browser extension to make Reddit better (Reddit Enhancement Suite).

As to the questions about "Why Reddit over these forums", well Reddit has 2 major advantages that make it a better place for such a thread (an AMA).

1 - Comment threads. Imagine on these forums that if I clicked on your post, I could immediately see each and every comment that quoted your post or was a direct reply to what you said in your comment. Instead of sorting through (potentially dozens) pages upon pages and reading every single comment to see which ones are related to yours, I would just click on yours and immediately see every comment that was replying to it (either in support or disagreement, but they are all in one place). As a reader, it makes it easy to get to the information you want to get to. As a dev answering questions, it makes it easy to see which comments are related and can all be answered with a single comment.

2 - Comment "sorting" via voting. As more people upvote a comment, it moves to the top of the thread. As more people downvote it, it moves down. As a dev, this makes it trivial to see those questions/comments that have a higher rate of agreement within the community. If its at the top, it means more people reading the thread care about getting that question answered than any other question in the thread. With limited dev time to answer questions, this gives them the ability to answer the most sought after questions without reading through dozens and dozens of pages to figure out what was commented the most often. Also, the sorting helps in getting these answeres visible to readers as well. If these questions are important to the community, they will be voted to the top, so it will be easy to just open their comment thread and see dev answers instead of digging through dozens and dozens pages of comments on these forums to figure out what the devs said.

Regardless of which forum any one likes better, Reddit is just better suited to an AMA than this forum will ever be, and its primarily because of those 2 reasons (also the larger userbase helps a lot)

[Palador.2170]

@WolfsFang.2301 said:For the people who ask "why reddit", try sorting through 500+ comments on a forum layout. Reddit makes it manageable to deal with a large amount of comments.

That's shouldn't be the reason, because if they feel the reddit style is better, then why didn't they change the official forums to a reddit style when they replaced them? These forums are bought and paid for by ANet. If they wanted something different, then why did they buy this version instead?

[aandiarie.7195]

It's probably on Reddit because a lot more people use reddit so a lot more people will see it. It makes sense.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Indeed. Obviously, this kind of forum is preferred.
I don't believe I ever asked, "Why Reddit over this forum?". I merely stated I find Reddit difficult to navigate, especially when Dev comments get hidden, and move around until the thread is essentially finished.

[TheOrlyFactor.8341]

@Ubi.4136 said:Yeah, I get that a lot of people use social media. BUT, why even have an official game forum is nothing ever happens on it. Everyone always posts to reddit/twitter/other and we wait for kind players to copy/paste that stuff to the OFFICIAL game forums.

If you've read the forums - specifically the negativity and vitriol - I don't blame them for going with Reddit. A lot of people here, at least from my perspective, seem to complain for the sake of complaining without providing feedback. I've been guilty of this myself in the past but I try to keep myself in check. In any event, if I were an Anet dev I'd want to host a celebration anywhere else but here.

However, I find that Reddit has the opposite problem - endless brown-nosing and butt kissing. Woe to you if you're not in agreement with whatever flavor-of-the-month opinion happens to be the in thing on there.

For those of us like myself who like GW2 but still have legitimate criticisms and try to address them in a reasonable, calm manner in hopes that the game will grow and improve, there really isn't a place for us. It's either go here where it seems like everyone complains and whines or go to the other place where it seems like everyone is a sycophant. :\

[Danikat.8537]

@Randulf.7614 said:

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:I would never want to post, just read. But, it's so confusing when the posts are moving around, hiding and such. One really has to wait until it's all over, and then open all the trees to find the all Dev posts (in context).

It's a shame that even with a new forum, specially chosen...that the major Dev interaction opportunities are still on Reddit. :anguished:

I am in agreement. I find it confusing and an unintelligible way to read and follow interactions. I had hoped given the increased interaction with us since the new forum launched it would translate across to these, but I too will wait for a summary since there is often interesting info to come out of these sessions.

I'm the same. If a reddit topic is finished - no new posts are being made - and I can take the time to sort it into the nearest the site allows to a sensible order (which to me is the order posts were created, since that gives you the preceding context for each post) then I can usually follow a thread, except when posts have been hidden/removed just because some people didn't like what they said.

But if a topic is still active? No chance. As far as I can tell the comments may as well be in a totally random order. It's worse that Facebooks "top stories" concept.

If that means I miss out on the opportunity to get my feedback heard then so be it.