We require a giant, player-based push towards promoting a better community.

[Vyldan]

Originally Posted by Ritual del Fuego

If you don't want to get started on farming...then don't bring it up. You can't "throw in" your opinion on something as an afterthought to a otherwise well thought out message and not expect people who don't agree to respond.

Right, right. My mistake, of course. As I mentioned earlier, if I let any argument on the subject slip prematurely, it is certain to be a cynical one. Well, apparently I let it slip in the first post. I shall make an effort to fix that after this reply.

Originally Posted by Lakatz

You are talking in the plural. You are saying "WE have a problem." The thing with that kind of thinking is that you are taking on responsibility for ALL of us (whether any of us turned it over to you or not). And that's HUGE.

We seem to be thinking on different wavelengths. When I say "We" have a problem, I mean that this problem either directly or indirectly affects us all. I say that "We" can all promote better alternatives, because that is exactly what I mean. I'm not saying I am going to do so, I am not saying we are all forced to do so, I am saying that we all have the capability of doing so. What I am suggesting is that more people involve themselves towards improving the morale and the methods of the community.

I suppose I put a little too much filler into my original post, and everyone is getting the wrong impression. To be blunt, I am specifically attempting to motivate any player who reads this to make choices that better benefit the way the community functions as a whole, as well as promote those choices. My biggest example still being the use of the Party Search Window. Its benefits grow as more people use it. If someone tells you nobody uses it, shrug it off and tell them "Don't be silly. People use it." What you say affects the public outlook towards it.

Edit: I edited my original post, clearing it of a great deal of irrelevant content, and replacing a large deal of it. It is worth it to re-read my original post and keep up-to-date.

[Zonzai]

Originally Posted by Vyldan

What do we do to fix all of this?

Do you actually believ that this can be fixed? You must be one of those people that believe that humans are inherently good. If someone does not see the wrong in what they are doing, they will not stop doing it.

Here's the problems with your plea...

1) Many people naturally focus on the bad things. They will see people spamming for groups or quitting and then just bitch about it. And then they will do it back out of frustration. Do unto others, afterall.

2) All people don't like being called out when they are wrong. If you tell them that leaving is wrong (like by bitching at them for example), you will just make them angry.

3) People are naturally selfish. Giving is an act of self-sacrifice. Staying, even when you feel like quitting is an act of kindness to others when there is no ramification for quitting. And most people are not well-adjusted (or mature) enough to be kind.

4) RA is used for build testing. People leave because their builds aren't any good. In which case, you have to ask, does it really even matter if they left?

5) People do not like to change their ways. Those, such as myself, who stay even when we really want to quit will continue to do so, but those who don't care won't change their ways on our say. (See point 2.)

6) The community at large does not have a problem. Most people don't quit. Many who do, only quit when they are dead and not rezzed and they know that there is no hope of winning. It's just a minority of people who quit or leech.

7) The search function was added so late in the game that nobody uses it simply because nobody else uses it. Most people just don't think about it and those few of us who do, usually find it to be a waste of time anyway.

Personally, I would love it if we could all be good sports and get along well. But the truth of the matter is that there are all kinds of people from all kinds of places playing this game at any single moment. And many of those people aren't the kind that are actually kind enough to give a flying **** about some guy on the other side of a computer 1,500 miles away.

Anyway, I'm not arguing with you. I like your ideas and the community isn't perfect or anything. But all things considered, it's about as good as we can hope for in an imperfect world.

[Vyldan]

Zonzai, I hate to say it, but your entire post is moot. That sentance you quoted was a mistake on my behalf. I had forgotten to change that when I revamped my entire original post. Thanks for pointing it out.

If you are curious, I had originally stated "How do we fix all of this? We don't. We can't. Do you expect everyone to comply?" Et cetera, et cetera.

[DutchGun]

Honestly, I think there are two major factors that tend to degrade any online community:

* Size - Once a certain threshold is reached, any sort of intimacy within the community is lost. I've run around in GW for nearly a year and a half. How many times have I encountered the same person? I have no idea - there's many thousands of people online at a given time. While the idea of a global, unified server is sort of cool, it also means that we lose the ability to familiarize ourselves with our "neighbors".

* Anonymity - One could also call this the lack of social consequences. In real life, consistently acting like an ass to everyone you meet (or even to occasional strangers) carries with it real-world consequences. You might become a social pariah, or someone may respond with a very real fist in your face after spouting racial slurs at them. Without consequences, many people lack the social restraint or internal morals to act considerately or compassionately on a regular basis.

What can we do about this? Unfortunately, both of these problems are not easily overcome without direct intervention from ArenaNet. Here's what I'd recommend:

* Create smaller "communities" of players through unique "home" servers and regions. Essentially, this means players would tend to group with the same people. Switching "homes" would be a simple matter, so that Guildies could, for example, be much more likely to randomly encounter other Alliance members while running around.

* Expand the scope of the "friends" and "ignored" lists (similar to X-Box Live player ratings). Give positive and negative feedback, ensuring that you tend to enter districts with people you give positive feedback to, and avoid people you've given negative feedback to. Best of all, it could even worth with "friends of friends", so that it gives you a nice selection of people you'd enjoy playing with. Any "negatives", or even "negatives of friends" may show up with a mark to indicate you may not want to play with them again. You'd have to limit the total number of feedback given by one person to a fix amount, since the servers would have to keep a list, and also because otherwise it would just be a commodity to be bought, sold, and abused.

Oh, and getting rid of the spam?

Once a global, on-demand auction house is implemented, all the trade spam goes away. I haven't played EQII in a few years now, but I seem to recall the auction house was really effective in that game.

The Party Search feature is nearly worthless as it stands. It's not intuitive to use, and it doesn't work globally (which would make it amazingly useful). Fixing this would eliminate a lot of the LFG spam.

[goober1973]

Controversially, I think Guild Wars’ main attraction is also it’s biggest failing, that being the lack of a subscription. I may not have played as many online games as some of you have but in my experience a fee tends to dissuade a certain type of player that Guild Wars has attracted by the thousands. When you pay to play a game that’s exactly what you do – play it. You don’t stand around outposts talking out of your rear end, spamming inane movie quotes or swearing just to see the word on screen. Personally, I've never come across an online community as rude and unhelpful as this one has become. I honestly don't think I would have played as long as I have if it had been like this a year and a half ago.

Like most people here I do not believe there is anything that can be done about the failing state of the community by the few players who care about it. I doubt there is even much Anet could do at this stage beyond taking a more heavy handed approach to breaches of conduct within the game. (How many threads have you seen where reports have, justifiably, been made yet the reported party remains active?)

Added features like the party search and an auction house are doomed to fail at this stage – it’s a case of too little, too late. We are creatures of habit and too used to using our LFG’s and WTS’s to make an effort to embrace something like this after almost two years. (Besides, the auction site here has shown some of the problems an AH would present - mainly players putting up items with ridiculously high starting prices/buyouts because they have simply no idea how an auction system works or what an item is worth)

Perhaps many of the rumours about the continuation of GW are true and Anet is just putting a final nail in its coffin before starting fresh with GW2 and will address many of these issues there.

(While I’d love to prattle on a bit longer my boss seems to think I should be doing something called “work”. )

[TabascoSauce]

Originally Posted by DutchGun

Once a global, on-demand auction house is implemented, all the trade spam goes away.

Consensus.

What everyone is saying boils down to the following statement:

The environment (the game itself) must be changed to effect change in the game

Thx!
TabascoSauce

[Kuldebar Valiturus]

Originally Posted by goober1973

Controversially, I think Guild Wars’ main attraction is also it’s biggest failing, that being the lack of a subscription. I may not have played as many online games as some of you have but in my experience a fee tends to dissuade a certain type of player that Guild Wars has attracted by the thousands. When you pay to play a game that’s exactly what you do – play it. You don’t stand around outposts talking out of your rear end, spamming inane movie quotes or swearing just to see the word on screen.

I agree with you to a certain extent.

A totally free game, and there are many out there (that you can download and play for free), attracts, shall we say, a more "social" crowd. Social to the extreme, that is. Meaning, they have no interest in the game except for animated online chat and teenage-like antics.

Now, to some degree this happens in all online games, and nothing is wrong with that because it is part of being a modern day pop-cultural watering hole.

But, remember, people still have to shell out almost 50 dollars to play Guild Wars so it mitigates the effect you outlined in your post.

So, what you are saying isn't a driving a factor, in my opinion. I don't consider it the cause of the in-game community malaise in Guild Wars. If you get right down to it, we can blame everything on pop-culture or Kevin Bacon.

[Kuldebar Valiturus]

Even something as simple as adding a hyper-link function for items in trade chat and whispers would go a long way to building community by toning down the noise that currently inundates it.

I suggested it some time ago, and I feel that if ANet is reluctant to add trade houses then at least they could allow us to shift-click items while in trade or private chat so that spamming is less necessary.

Hyper-linking would significantly reduce the need for descriptive spam when selling or trading items. Being able to click a linked item in chat to see its stats improves interplayer communication. Having this ability only work in Trade or private chat divert people from using general/local chat as often for trade purposes.

The point is, many of the things that can improve the sense of community aren't necessarily people-based so much as game design based.

[Thallandor]

TBH Vyldan, when i read your OP, first impression i had was that you were perhaps too full of yourself (no flame, just how i felt at that point in time.) Perhaps that is also part of the problem with the community?

That ever crossed your mind when you wrote the piece?

The ingame community building tools are lacking. The only purpose for a guild/Alliance is either to PvP or share a common chat and we know how much every one in GW "loves" to PVP right???? GG.