Originally posted by fenistil
For few years already official game forums are usually heavy handed.   In almost all mmoprg's. There must have been some research or data-mining that proved that forums are used by bigger amount of players and potential customers than previosuly beleived.

Seems to have gotten really bad with the WoW forums during the end of wotlk. Other companies have adopted the same strat. 

You don't want potential customers seeing bad stuff.

i agree with OP. i was just issued a "Last Warning" by the mods after too many infractions for not contributing meaningfully to the disccusion. All of my deleted posts were noninflammatory and on-topic. if i keep posting the way i am, im going to get perma banned from the forums apparently. i sent them back a message saying that im too scared to post and that i'll be taking all my discussion over to Reddit and Guru. No response of course. 

this is very unbecoming of a company wanting to build a community, and i think this needs to be exposed. it's getting absolutely ridiculous.

Originally posted by bcbully

Originally posted by fenistil
For few years already official game forums are usually heavy handed.   In almost all mmoprg's. There must have been some research or data-mining that proved that forums are used by bigger amount of players and potential customers than previosuly beleived.

Seems to have gotten really bad with the WoW forums during the end of wotlk. Other companies have adopted the same strat. 

You don't want potential customers seeing bad stuff.

Are you sure things were actually deleted? I thought Bliz only moved threads (even into a deleted folder but still viewable) but never outright deleted them. Even so it is usually very clear why threads were closed or moved.

Originally posted by cptndunsel

Players have been pointing out issues with bots, bugs, in-game changes they don't agree with (nerfs, class changes, monthly achievement changes, dungeon loot etc) and for the most part it had been polite feedback.

 

Now, however, as Anet has failed to address basic items like bots and bugs, has not listened to feedback around their changes in game, and have made other odd moves (such as the recent change in WvWvW to remove Orbs because of hacking issues and Anet inability to fix the game - so poof - gone now along with the bonus to stats they provided) people have become more vocal.

 

Moderators are now taking a very heavy hand, deleting threads they don't like, issuing bans etc. even if the "complaint" is voiced in non-hostile, non-vulgar way.

 

This is never a good sign. Moderators have far too much power, restrict the honest exchange of ideas and feedback, and the forums become the realm of fanbois. Same thing occurred with TSW - its not at all player friendly.

 

Restrict vulgar people -yes. Shut down discussion and feedback on broken elements of the game? Epic fail.

I'm glad the orbs are gone.  Aside from people ninja'ing the orbs with hacks, the orbs were not a good idea in the first place.  Why give the most powerful team even more bonuses to just crush the weaker teams even more easily?  It just didn't make sense.  9 times out of 10 the server in the lead had the orbs - and just made it even harder for the other servers to catch up.

So I'm happy the orbs are gone, but maybe they can replace the orbs with something different.  Actually, something like the buffs the orbs provided might be good as a replacement for the current useless undermanned buff, but that could get sketchy also.

Anyways glad they're gone for now! 

Originally posted by Harafnir
What an odd place to suddenly start bashing The Secret World...

Was not bashing the game - I still play TSW. Comment was directed at their forums - same thing happens on their board to anyone who posts anything deemed complaint or too controversial.

Originally posted by Tamanous

Originally posted by bcbully

Originally posted by fenistil
For few years already official game forums are usually heavy handed.   In almost all mmoprg's. There must have been some research or data-mining that proved that forums are used by bigger amount of players and potential customers than previosuly beleived.

Seems to have gotten really bad with the WoW forums during the end of wotlk. Other companies have adopted the same strat. 

You don't want potential customers seeing bad stuff.

Are you sure things were actually deleted? I thought Bliz only moved threads (even into a deleted folder but still viewable) but never outright deleted them. Even so it is usually very clear why threads were closed or moved.

Deletes and locks mostly locks.

Originally posted by botrytis

I will say this once - THEIR FORUM, THEIR RULES.  Don't like the way they are moderating, don't go there.

pretty much. posting there has caused me nothing but grief, and tbh, i kinda feel abused for doing so. ive left for good, and only use the devtracker. 

Originally posted by Tamanous

Originally posted by bcbully

Originally posted by fenistil
For few years already official game forums are usually heavy handed.   In almost all mmoprg's. There must have been some research or data-mining that proved that forums are used by bigger amount of players and potential customers than previosuly beleived.

Seems to have gotten really bad with the WoW forums during the end of wotlk. Other companies have adopted the same strat. 

You don't want potential customers seeing bad stuff.

Are you sure things were actually deleted? I thought Bliz only moved threads (even into a deleted folder but still viewable) but never outright deleted them. Even so it is usually very clear why threads were closed or moved.

Damn you had to quote em' T_T

Originally posted by Brizlyn

Originally posted by cptndunsel

Players have been pointing out issues with bots, bugs, in-game changes they don't agree with (nerfs, class changes, monthly achievement changes, dungeon loot etc) and for the most part it had been polite feedback.

 

Now, however, as Anet has failed to address basic items like bots and bugs, has not listened to feedback around their changes in game, and have made other odd moves (such as the recent change in WvWvW to remove Orbs because of hacking issues and Anet inability to fix the game - so poof - gone now along with the bonus to stats they provided) people have become more vocal.

 

Moderators are now taking a very heavy hand, deleting threads they don't like, issuing bans etc. even if the "complaint" is voiced in non-hostile, non-vulgar way.

 

This is never a good sign. Moderators have far too much power, restrict the honest exchange of ideas and feedback, and the forums become the realm of fanbois. Same thing occurred with TSW - its not at all player friendly.

 

Restrict vulgar people -yes. Shut down discussion and feedback on broken elements of the game? Epic fail.

I'm glad the orbs are gone.  Aside from people ninja'ing the orbs with hacks, the orbs were not a good idea in the first place.  Why give the most powerful team even more bonuses to just crush the weaker teams even more easily?  It just didn't make sense.  9 times out of 10 the server in the lead had the orbs - and just made it even harder for the other servers to catch up.

So I'm happy the orbs are gone, but maybe they can replace the orbs with something different.  Actually, something like the buffs the orbs provided might be good as a replacement for the current useless undermanned buff, but that could get sketchy also.

Anyways glad they're gone for now! 

 

Ummm because they earned it? Do you think the weaker team will do better now? Where in the world did this culture of no reward come from? 

Originally posted by Aerowyn

not only is there a sticky about it

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/On-Botting-and-What-We-re-Doing-About-It/first

there's another post by the lead dev

 

Hey folks,

Since it has been a few weeks since we gave an update on this, just wanted to quickly update where we stand. We recently hired an entire new team of people with one mission in mind: operation bot destruction.

They’ve been getting everything in place to accomplish our goal of making botting, hacking, spamming, and malicious behavior as non-existent as possible in Gw2. In the last few weeks, over 10,000 bot accounts were banned from the game alone. Another area of massive improvement has been in account security, where our two-factor authentication as well as your password changes have led to account thefts dropping to a tiny rate. A vast majority of account thieves use those accounts to run bots and/or perform RMT transactions, so our serious beefing up of account security has led to fewer bots, and most importantly fewer stolen accounts. That being said, we have massive improvements on the way in the next couple of weeks that help us detect, verify, and remove botters.

What we don’t want to do is have someone report you as botting, we ban the account, the bot appeals, and we have no data to prove they were botting on file so we have to give them the account back. Ensuring we have 100% clear data on bots that’s incredibly easy for our GM team to quickly verify, and when an appeal is submitted verify within seconds if the person was truly botting is our most important goal. We don’t want to ban people who were not botting, and we want to keep the people who are permanently locked out.

Bottom line: We’re doing ok, but we know we can and need to do much better on this front and are putting massive resources behind ensuring we have a permanent solution to this issue. You’ll see a dramatic improvement in this area in the next few weeks as our remaining detection and bot destruction tools and staff come online.

We’ll continue to keep updating on this front as we go forward, but rest assured we are aware of issues folks are raising and take them incredibly seriously. From FOV to bots, account restoration to more awesome stuff to do at level 80 we have teams working like mad on all of these fronts.

 

really not sure what else you want from them.. they said they just got a whole team working on it I know on Rall I haven't seen any bots in over a week now

You know? There really are some fans that should be paid for what they bring to a game or its community. Keep that love alive girl.

Originally posted by umie214

i agree with OP. i was just issued a "Last Warning" by the mods after too many infractions for not contributing meaningfully to the disccusion. All of my deleted posts were noninflammatory and on-topic. if i keep posting the way i am, im going to get perma banned from the forums apparently. i sent them back a message saying that im too scared to post and that i'll be taking all my discussion over to Reddit and Guru. No response of course. 

this is very unbecoming of a company wanting to build a community, and i think this needs to be exposed. it's getting absolutely ridiculous.

This is what prompted me to post here - same thing happened to me when I questioned why they changed the monthly requirement to now include dungeon runs. I have an 80 with all exotic gear. I have no need for anything that drops in a dungeon yet am now expected to run 3 of these to get the monthly. Amd this change was slid in with the latest patch after Halloween with no real explanation.

Couple this with the fact dungeons are time sinks, drops are meh, and boss loot is worthless to a level 80... my post to them was not vulgar and simply questioned the decision. Bam - deleted and a PM to me.

Originally posted by Crazy_Stick

Originally posted by Aerowyn

not only is there a sticky about it

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/On-Botting-and-What-We-re-Doing-About-It/first

there's another post by the lead dev

 

Hey folks,

Since it has been a few weeks since we gave an update on this, just wanted to quickly update where we stand. We recently hired an entire new team of people with one mission in mind: operation bot destruction.

They’ve been getting everything in place to accomplish our goal of making botting, hacking, spamming, and malicious behavior as non-existent as possible in Gw2. In the last few weeks, over 10,000 bot accounts were banned from the game alone. Another area of massive improvement has been in account security, where our two-factor authentication as well as your password changes have led to account thefts dropping to a tiny rate. A vast majority of account thieves use those accounts to run bots and/or perform RMT transactions, so our serious beefing up of account security has led to fewer bots, and most importantly fewer stolen accounts. That being said, we have massive improvements on the way in the next couple of weeks that help us detect, verify, and remove botters.

What we don’t want to do is have someone report you as botting, we ban the account, the bot appeals, and we have no data to prove they were botting on file so we have to give them the account back. Ensuring we have 100% clear data on bots that’s incredibly easy for our GM team to quickly verify, and when an appeal is submitted verify within seconds if the person was truly botting is our most important goal. We don’t want to ban people who were not botting, and we want to keep the people who are permanently locked out.

Bottom line: We’re doing ok, but we know we can and need to do much better on this front and are putting massive resources behind ensuring we have a permanent solution to this issue. You’ll see a dramatic improvement in this area in the next few weeks as our remaining detection and bot destruction tools and staff come online.

We’ll continue to keep updating on this front as we go forward, but rest assured we are aware of issues folks are raising and take them incredibly seriously. From FOV to bots, account restoration to more awesome stuff to do at level 80 we have teams working like mad on all of these fronts.

 

really not sure what else you want from them.. they said they just got a whole team working on it I know on Rall I haven't seen any bots in over a week now

 

You know? There really are some fans that should be paid for what they bring to a game or its community. Keep that love alive girl.

This is a big money industry playing a game for hundreds of millions of dollors. I'm sure some "fans" do get paid.

[mod edit]

Originally posted by bcbully

 

You know? There really are some fans that should be paid for what they bring to a game or its community. Keep that love alive girl.

This is a big money industry playing a game for hundreds of millions of dollors. I'm sure some "fans" do get paid.

i wish

Originally posted by bcbully

Originally posted by Brizlyn

Originally posted by cptndunsel

Players have been pointing out issues with bots, bugs, in-game changes they don't agree with (nerfs, class changes, monthly achievement changes, dungeon loot etc) and for the most part it had been polite feedback.

 

Now, however, as Anet has failed to address basic items like bots and bugs, has not listened to feedback around their changes in game, and have made other odd moves (such as the recent change in WvWvW to remove Orbs because of hacking issues and Anet inability to fix the game - so poof - gone now along with the bonus to stats they provided) people have become more vocal.

 

Moderators are now taking a very heavy hand, deleting threads they don't like, issuing bans etc. even if the "complaint" is voiced in non-hostile, non-vulgar way.

 

This is never a good sign. Moderators have far too much power, restrict the honest exchange of ideas and feedback, and the forums become the realm of fanbois. Same thing occurred with TSW - its not at all player friendly.

 

Restrict vulgar people -yes. Shut down discussion and feedback on broken elements of the game? Epic fail.

I'm glad the orbs are gone.  Aside from people ninja'ing the orbs with hacks, the orbs were not a good idea in the first place.  Why give the most powerful team even more bonuses to just crush the weaker teams even more easily?  It just didn't make sense.  9 times out of 10 the server in the lead had the orbs - and just made it even harder for the other servers to catch up.

So I'm happy the orbs are gone, but maybe they can replace the orbs with something different.  Actually, something like the buffs the orbs provided might be good as a replacement for the current useless undermanned buff, but that could get sketchy also.

Anyways glad they're gone for now! 

 

Ummm because they earned it? Do you think the weaker team will do better now? Where in the world did this culture of no reward come from? 

Never said I was against rewards for doing well, but I am against rewards that alter the balance of WvW in a way that makes no sense whatsoever/inhibits a fair playing field.

I'm sure there are other ideas for carrots that could be come up with.  Maybe at the end of each round, currently weekly, the winning server get's a chest similar to when you complete your daily's with bonus badges, some money, or something.  Over time maybe they add more cosmetic stuff you can buy with badges since current selection is limited.  Just tossing out anything I can think of, but I'm sure there are better ideas.

Anything that doesn't unbalance the field of play like when my server had all three orbs, I literally had 5k more hit points as just one of the bonuses, just making it that much harder for the struggling servers to take me down.  What challenge is that when you're already beating their ass? lol

Originally posted by Aerowyn

Originally posted by bcbully

 

You know? There really are some fans that should be paid for what they bring to a game or its community. Keep that love alive girl.

This is a big money industry playing a game for hundreds of millions of dollors. I'm sure some "fans" do get paid.

i wish

 Where do I sign up?

Originally posted by Toxia

Here are a few threads i found with a quick search, they are still going and not locked or nothing....

 

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Getting-Fed-Up

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Orbs-will-be-removed-from-WvW-in-an-upcoming-build

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Why-Orb-Removal-Will-be-Very-Bad-for-WvW

 

so yeah, if they are deleting threads, its most likely because they are duplicates.

They seem oddly random about it to me.  They obviously let a lot of complaining slide, but then crack down on little things, like using too many caps in a post.  Not all caps, mind you.  Just too many.

Originally posted by bcbully

Originally posted by Brizlyn

Originally posted by cptndunsel

Players have been pointing out issues with bots, bugs, in-game changes they don't agree with (nerfs, class changes, monthly achievement changes, dungeon loot etc) and for the most part it had been polite feedback.

 

Now, however, as Anet has failed to address basic items like bots and bugs, has not listened to feedback around their changes in game, and have made other odd moves (such as the recent change in WvWvW to remove Orbs because of hacking issues and Anet inability to fix the game - so poof - gone now along with the bonus to stats they provided) people have become more vocal.

 

Moderators are now taking a very heavy hand, deleting threads they don't like, issuing bans etc. even if the "complaint" is voiced in non-hostile, non-vulgar way.

 

This is never a good sign. Moderators have far too much power, restrict the honest exchange of ideas and feedback, and the forums become the realm of fanbois. Same thing occurred with TSW - its not at all player friendly.

 

Restrict vulgar people -yes. Shut down discussion and feedback on broken elements of the game? Epic fail.

I'm glad the orbs are gone.  Aside from people ninja'ing the orbs with hacks, the orbs were not a good idea in the first place.  Why give the most powerful team even more bonuses to just crush the weaker teams even more easily?  It just didn't make sense.  9 times out of 10 the server in the lead had the orbs - and just made it even harder for the other servers to catch up.

So I'm happy the orbs are gone, but maybe they can replace the orbs with something different.  Actually, something like the buffs the orbs provided might be good as a replacement for the current useless undermanned buff, but that could get sketchy also.

Anyways glad they're gone for now! 

 

Ummm because they earned it? Do you think the weaker team will do better now? Where in the world did this culture of no reward come from? 

I wonder where the culture of "we proved we were good, now our reward should make us virtually invincible" came from.  Yes, players/teams that win should be rewarded things like trophies for doing well.  Why should a powerful team become even more powerful because they earned some rewards?  Should the Patriots, Steelers, or Giants become more powerful because they won some Super Bowls?

Doesn't anyone believe in parity anymore?

I beleive in most professional sports the worse you do in a season the higher your drafts picks are next year or something to the effect.