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reddit vs official forum


ARZK.8017

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I know the problem was already discussed on the old forums, but I think it should be rediscussed. The problem is the way of communication of the ANet employees with the community. For many the forum is the first source of information when it comes to problems/bugs or need for help with anything redarding GW2. Therefore many will only look into the forums.The problem with this is, that in some cases the community is left alone in those forums and I have the feelings, that a lot more ANet employees communicate through reddit. Why cant those employees not just use the forums? I thought it will get better with the new forums, but seems not.The cause for this discussion is the achievment "imposter syndrome". I did the event several times now, and as you all know it is currenty total random to get it. I followed the discussions about it for a couple of days now (https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/7150/imposter-syndrome-achievement), and then somebody posted there was an AMA on reddit about it, where an ANet employee posted it is a bug. So why isnt it possible for ANet employees to answer that on the discussion? And why isnt the AMA done on the forums?A response from ANet would be nice. Are you aware of this problem? And are you planning to do something on it?

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As you mentioned it was already discussed in old forums and your concerns were answered there. Anet devs have no obligation to use neither forums nor reddit. They engage in topics they feel they should or like to. In terms of community managers, like Gaile, since new forums were established they use this place only (not counting AMA for obvious reasons).

Also, after new forums launched, the overall quality of reddit went down imo, so looks like people interested in discussing the game without overused memes transfered back here.

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I agree.

What exactly is the point of remaking this forum if the staffs aren't actively participating on it? Why would they choose reddit over this forums for AMA? If reddit is in any way better, why did they not make the exact type of forums as reddit is for the official forums? I actually died a little inside when they said they were gonna do the AMA in reddit and not here, it makes me feel dumb to stay in this forums actually.

It's like telling us to leave this forum and go to reddit instead.

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What exactly is the point of remaking this forum if the staffs aren't actively participating on it?

I've seen a lot of red posts here.

Why would they choose reddit over this forums for AMA?

It was already explained by Gaile together with plans for future so you probably need to validate your informations before complaining.

If reddit is in any way better, why did they not make the exact type of forums as reddit is for the official forums?

Different tools for different things.

I actually died a little inside when they said they were gonna do the AMA in reddit and not here, it makes me feel kitten to stay in this forums actually. It's like telling us to leave this forum and go to reddit instead.

You claim to be official forums enthusiasts and yet you ignored Gaile's explanation about this decision. Hilarious.

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If I remember correctly the explanation given is that with the exception of a few people (like Gaile) reading and posting on the forum or other fan sites is not considered part of their job, so it's something they do by choice in their free time and they're therefore free to post, or not post, when and where they want.

On the one hand I understand that. On the other hand I'm thinking any time they post anywhere as an Anet staffer (as opposed to posting anonymously eg. on here from a private GW2 account) they are going to be perceived as representing the company. Same way I am when I talk about my work, even if it's the weekend and I'm talking to my friends. If someone says "why does [Dani's employer] have this policy?" and I answer it doesn't matter that I'm not at work, or that it's not my decision or even my department, if I answer I am providing a statement on behalf of my employer. (And therefore I have to be kitten careful what I say.) And how, or in this case where, you say it can have as much impact as what you say.

Having said that if my employer told me I was only allowed to talk about work on their official website and no where else I'd probably just stop posting about it online. I think their community pages are a mess, nearly as bad to navigate as Reddit. (And no I can't change that/persuade someone else to change it.) So if those are my options I wouldn't post. And I imagine it's the same for some people at Anet - they post on Reddit because they prefer it.

If that's the options I think I'd rather keep the current situation where at least the question may get answered somewhere and then players can tell each other what was said.

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I agree. Even though the official forums were renewed, I still see Anet employers frequently posting on reddit, while paying a lot less attention to this forum.Why even have an official forum if it's not used as the main way to communicate to players? I can understand why a Q&A might be more suitable for reddit, but otherwise I see absolutely no reason for why they would prefer posting on reddit than the offical forums when answering questions and such.

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@Paralux.6714 said:I agree. Even though the official forums were renewed, I still see Anet employers frequently posting on reddit, while paying a lot less attention to this forum.Why even have an official forum if it's not used as the main way to communicate to players? I can understand why a Q&A might be more suitable for reddit, but otherwise I see absolutely no reason for why they would prefer posting on reddit than the offical forums when answering questions and such.

If you look, the majority of the Dev posts on Reddit are of the [Fluff] variety. Instances where they can make comments about the game/players that is not going to be construed into promises/future content/agreement or disagreement on design choices. This fits with the tone that Reddit has.

Posts on the official forum are often directly more game mechanics based and so I'm sure Devs are much more wary of commenting where their comments could get misconstrued or taken as an offical policy or statement by Anet.

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Reddit is an awful place and a real cesspool. I rather have not much aNet posts than getting contaminated from the 9chan virus over there.When this forums "opened" (we were forced to be here to be more precise) they bashes this forums to have "moderation" and "people getting banned for swearing" - complain by a guy with a nickname I can't even post without getting infracted.

I wonder where the fascination of reddit is coming from, but if I had kids, I would tell them to stay away from drugs, the Bronx at night and reddit.

Excelsior.

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@Kheldorn.5123 said:

What exactly is the point of remaking this forum if the staffs aren't actively participating on it?

I've seen a lot of red posts here.

Why would they choose reddit over this forums for AMA?

It was already explained by Gaile together with plans for future so you probably need to validate your informations before complaining.

If reddit is in any way better, why did they not make the exact type of forums as reddit is for the official forums?

Different tools for different things.

I actually died a little inside when they said they were gonna do the AMA in reddit and not here, it makes me feel kitten to stay in this forums actually. It's like telling us to leave this forum and go to reddit instead.

You claim to be official forums enthusiasts and yet you ignored Gaile's explanation about this decision. Hilarious.

You claim to think Reddit had "quality" enough for it to drop. Also hillarious.

I have absolutely no idea how anyone with eyeballs thinks reddit is easy to navigate, understand, or LOOK at.

But back on point.Nobody here or on old forums was asking and whining for dev posts here for the sake of "communication and friendship".The GRIPE was with ESSENTIAL INFORMATION.

Essential.

Massive bugs, massive exploits(not fake ones like afk rangernecro farm, but like legit). Holy moly HOT DOG, even PATCH NOTES on several occasions hit reddit before the OFFICIAL forums AND the wiki.

And your explanation for this is "they dont have to post here"?!!!

THEY DONT HAVE TO POST ON REDDIT EITHER

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You claim to think Reddit had "quality" enough for it to drop. Also hillarious.

never said this

The GRIPE was with ESSENTIAL INFORMATION.

Essential.

Massive bugs, massive exploits(not fake ones like afk rangernecro farm, but like legit). Holy moly HOT DOG, even PATCH NOTES on several occasions hit reddit before the OFFICIAL forums AND the wiki.

this week I got assisted here on forums by pvp devs and they helped me within a day, devs also posted specialization changes before pof here, there is an official pof feedback thread that is being monitored by devs, clearly your expectations are blown beyond proportions at this point, especially with this:

And your explanation for this is "they dont have to post here"?!!!

it's not my explanation, it's anet explanation and this is true, no dev have any responsibility to use public forums, they are designers, coders, testers etc. but for player communication there is communication team, whenever you see red post here or on reddit it's good will of a dev, not their responsibility, to talk to you, ever

THEY DONT HAVE TO POST ON REDDIT EITHER

well, maybe quality of player discussion is better there?

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I followed the discussions about it for a couple of days now (https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/7150/imposter-syndrome-achievement), and then somebody posted there was an AMA on reddit about it, where an ANet employee posted it is a bug. So why isnt it possible for ANet employees to answer that on the discussion? And why isnt the AMA done on the forums?

I would like to comment about this part specifically. When there is ongoing AMA, devs are at work but they have kinda "free" time to come and talk to players, answer questions and generally enjoy the release/expansion. Outside of AMA they are working on new content, fixing bugs, creating new assets etc. which means if they are to engage any discussion on forums it's mostly during their free time. And with all due respect, I work in somewhat customer support related place and after my working hours I never talk to my customers.

I think people expecting devs to answer your every thread should reconsider their expectations. Official forums is not described as your personal player2dev contact platform.

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Specific to the AMA, reddit's format is much easier to do a Q&A.

@TheOrlyFactor.8341 said:

@Kheldorn.5123 said:well, maybe the quality of player discussion is better there?Pffffhahahahahahahaha. XDThank you for the laugh. I needed it. :')

Sadly, the subreddit's gone downhill in the last half-year or so. It's mostly memes and goofy pictures with the occasional bit of discussion that lasts two days at the most. And lots of rehash threads: dps benchmarks that would never work in a real raid, kill time videos, "thanks ANet"...
Anything on actually improving the game that isn't build templates tends to get downvoted into the ground by the "l2p" crowd that got banned from the official forums.Aside from links to Dulfy guides and that_shaman peeks, there really isn't much reason to be there.

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The only reason why reddit appears to have more developer presence is because every time a dev posts on an issue on the official forums, their response is taken to be an absolute promise about something. A dev posts on a thread complaining about a skill mechanic simply saying "we'll look into it", suddenly the skill is expected to be completely changed, when the result of them looking into it could very well be "working as intended". But if that's the result, they get a whole lot of flak about it because "they promised to fix it", when in fact they made no such promise.

Reddit and other non-official boards give them more room to breath on these types of things since the unofficial nature of those boards removes all obligation to produce results. This is one of the reasons why I, and many others, feel the need to repeatedly remind people that nothing you read on Reddit is to be taken as an official response. Even if the post was legitimately made by an actual ANet dev, if it was posted anywhere but on the official forums, it is no more official than a random player making the same exact post.

They use reddit and other outlets to post information about things that are in the works but not guaranteed to happen, or to discuss issues without fear of creating an obligation to fix something that might not even be broken in the first place. If the community would react better to such posts on the official forums instead of taking everything said here to be absolute guarantees then we would see a larger dev presence here.

As many may have noticed, when this new forum went live we actually had a large dev presence for the first few days, however that quickly dropped off as people took a lot of dev responses out of context and put far more weight to the responses given than they actually had. It goes without saying, most of the devs that had rejoined the forum community with the launch of the new forums quietly left it again since it was clear that they couldn't make posts here without apparently creating some sort of contractual obligation to fulfill the wishes of random players.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that they shouldn't post important information here, just explaining why such posts usually show up elsewhere first. A patch note posted on Reddit may be discussing upcomming changes, but when it goes live, some of those changes might have been scrapped or changed. And in some cases, a dev may be so accustomed to posting on other sites, that they simply forgot to make the post on the official forums as well. When that happens, if a player has copied or linked to the reddit post of the information over on the official boards, they will often just leave it at that, despite the fact that a lot of players do not actually believe any information posted on Reddit to be real. If a dev posts any official information on Reddit or any other outlet, that information NEEDS to be posted on the official forums as well BY A DEV.

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@"Kheldorn.5123" Yeah, I can now remember the answers, and that they do the reddit post in there freetime. Still, it doesnt "feel" good when some information like what is a bug and not is answered on reddit first. And "we" on the official forum will only take notice because some users which are active on reddit too will link this.And my question was why arent the AMAs done on the forum instead of reddit? They could reach a lot more people here.And I dont have such high expectations ;-) I dont need to talk to devs directly, but as I mentioned, it doesnt feel/look good to see ANet more active at reddit than there own forum, especially when it comes to important infos like what is bugged at the moment.And yes, ANet is very active on some subforum (API, PVP), but it could be better in the most important (in my opinion) sub "Guild Wars 2 Discussion".

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And my question was why arent the AMAs done on the forum instead of reddit? They could reach a lot more people here.

Could they? I wouldn't be so sure. Both devs and players may prefer reddit because of non official atmosphere present there and less strict moderation.

About why AMA takes place on reddit it was explained that reddit engine is more suited for this. When Gaile announced last AMA here she also told us she has some ideas about how make AMAs here, be she can't promise anything.

To be honest, if they did AMA here using current forum engine it would be impossible to read, going through hundreds of player comments about same thing looking for 1 dev answer. This would be impossible to read both for players and devs. Sorry, that's the reality.

it doesnt feel/look good to see ANet more active at reddit than there own forum, especially when it comes to important infos like what is bugged at the moment

You and other poster act kinda fixated (don't know a better word for it) about mentioning one thing being a bug on reddit. First of all, it happened furing AMA, which means devs got "free" time for players to talk about it. Second thing, it is virtually impossible for them to monitor every bug thread and respond to people "this is a bug, this is not a bug" etc. I don't think we need dev presence on every bug related question.

I don't agree devs are more present on reddit. Lately, especially after PoF, their activity went down a lot there, meanwhile Gaile is doing amazing job posting announcements and responding to people here. Remember, this is the place for player discussion, not dev contact board. The main discussion section is especially place for players to post feedback that devs may or may not consider worthwile. Again, we have official statements, announcements, patch notes and game breaking issues posted here, not on reddit. I think it's better if they spent time fixing bugs and creating content, than hanging out with players for fluff discussions.

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@Syktek.7912 said:Reddit also allows high quality player submitted content, memes, images, personal names, anonymity, etc.

Using the phrase 'high quality' and 'Reddit' in the same sentence is hilarious.

I see the same nonsense there as I do here. The only difference is that the forums lack the crappy meme, circlejerk-of-the-month nonsense that's found on Reddit and the mods do nothing about it. I've seen people with legit concerns on Reddit get downvoted because they're not a part of whatever the in-crowd is and not gobbling up whatever the herd is going along with. I've seen countless 'thank you Anet' posts that contribute nothing of worth except to further the person's karma points. I've seen egos flare up and clash.

The fact of the matter is that both platforms are awful. These forums are awful. Reddit is awful. If it's a community on the internet, it's awful. It's pretty much an unspoken rule by this point.

inb4 'hurr ur posts are awful then' Yes this post was made with the acknowledgement that my posts are also awful. Thank you for noticing. This is the internet, after all. Enjoy your stay.

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@Kheldorn.5123 said:

You claim to think Reddit had "quality" enough for it to drop. Also hillarious.

never said this

You literally said quality has gone down. Quality cannot go down unless you thought it had qualiry to begin with.

Also it was a generalization on the website as a whole.

The GRIPE was with ESSENTIAL INFORMATION.

Essential.

Massive bugs, massive exploits(not fake ones like afk rangernecro farm, but like legit). Holy moly HOT DOG, even PATCH NOTES on several occasions hit reddit before the OFFICIAL forums AND the wiki.

this week I got assisted here on forums by pvp devs and they helped me within a day, devs also posted specialization changes before pof here, there is an official pof feedback thread that is being monitored by devs, clearly your expectations are blown beyond proportions at this point, especially with this:

"Devs helped me personally so the system is fine"

And your explanation for this is "they dont have to post here"?!!!

it's not my explanation, it's anet explanation and this is true, no dev have any responsibility to use public forums, they are designers, coders, testers etc. but for player communication there is communication team, whenever you see red post here or on reddit it's good will of a dev, not their responsibility, to talk to you, ever

I know that. I even STATED EXACTLY THAT.

THEY DONT HAVE TO POST ON REDDIT EITHERsee abovewell, maybe quality of player discussion is better there?

Next joke please.

Also since it was removes I will repeat:I can name SEVEN seperate times that changes were made in game amd NOT included in patch notes when build changed. But WAS posted on Reddit.

The most popular one was CHANGES TO GIFT OF BATTLE.

IT WAS NEVER REPORTED ON ANY OFFICIAL NOTE. NOT HERE. NOT WIKI. NOT IN LAUNCHER. NOT ON OFFICIAL WEBSITE.

but sure was on Reddit.

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Changes to gift of battle were posted in WvW section of official forums long before they were implemented. Looks like you have problems with searching through information sources, because devs do communicate such things.

Rest of your post is impossible to comprehend as real discussion. Unless anything constructive is being posted here that wasn't already explained I seize my activity here.

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@Bakeneko.5826 said:Reddit is huge echo chamber, either you with herd, or downvoted. Here everyone is equal. Pick your poison.

I agree. Reddit is terrible because of the way the voting system works. I wonder how many interesting topics people miss just because they were downvoted early.I created a few reddid accounts so far and always ended up deleting them because the system they use is not working for me.

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in my opinion it's not so much when a dev likes to share information on reddit, but the problem is more or less that sometimes vital information is shared on reddit, or important truth-bombs, and if a dev answers such a question or concern on reddit, it should feel self-explenatory to address it here as well.

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