Einlanzer.1627

> @Menadena.7482 said:

> > @SkyShroud.2865 said:

> > Thumbs down to me is similar to peer pressure to conform people to specific social norm. If someone is to say something not of the majority's interest, people can easily abuse the thumb down, not because it is a verbally offensive post but because "i don't like it". It is like public way of silencing free speech.

>

> Silencing free speech? Yeesh.

>

> Say there were no thumbs up or thumbs down options. Would a thousand posts that basically said 'I agree' or 'I disagree' be better or worse? Why?

>

> I would vote worse. You are conveying the same information but in more space. All that really matters is how many people agreed/disagreed, right? To bring it a step further, I would prefer to see the list of names of who agreed/disagreed return as some names on a forum carry more weight than others. Either in general or on a specific topic (say there was a medical question, I would be more inclined to listen to a practicing physician in that field than someone spouting a general opinion).

>

The majority of people that click disagree would not take the time to post "I disagree" if clicking a thumbs down button wasn't available, only a small percentage of them would, so this is a flawed argument.

This is exactly an illustration why downvoting is a terrible system. It favors conformity over innovation of ideas. Regular forums do that to an extent, but downvoting (and to a lesser degree upvoting) really exacerbates it.

> @Helbjorne.9368 said:

> > @Einlanzer.1627 said:

> > > @Helbjorne.9368 said:

> > > > @Einlanzer.1627 said:

> > > > > @Helbjorne.9368 said:

> > > > > I am a simple man. I see posts about removing Thumbs Down, I Thumbs Down.

> > > >

> > > > Thank you for taking a brief moment to confirm my observation of how people use thumb down and why it's a net negative for forums.

> > >

> > > If you really wanted I could pretend I have an in-depth knowledge of the human psyche and claim that by allowing people to vote on comments it removes substantial content from the forums as the only people using the voting system are those that have no understanding of the posts they are voting on... Oh wait.

> >

> > And you'd basically be right! Except voting up is less of an issue because it doesn't result in spreading negativity and is a simple way to draw attention to popular ideas.

> > @Rauderi.8706 said:

> > In the old forums, if you wanted your agreement/disagreement known, you would put up a short post ("No. /15char lol"), but it would just be useless screen clutter. And mildly against the forum's spam/bumping policy. And the prior +1 system didn't do much unless someone got a particularly popular post enough to show a thumbs-up symbol next to it.

>

> Coincidentally that was exactly what I was referring to in my reply to Einlazer, who apparently likes to use terms such as toxic and stupid to describe people that disagree with him, yet he wants to remove the negativity from the forums through removing the Thumbs Down option.

Yeah, basically. I can already see myself abandoning this forum due to the thumbs down, because I have no patience dealing with terrible people, and terrible people emerge very quickly in systems that use downvoting for dissent. I never respond that way to other peoples' ideas. Ever. I either provide constructive criticism, I thoughtfully agree, or I don't pay it any mind if it's outside of my headspace.

> @Rauderi.8706 said:

> > @Helbjorne.9368 said:

> > If you really wanted I could pretend I have an in-depth knowledge of the human psyche and claim that by allowing people to vote on comments it **removes substantial content from the forums** as the only people using the voting system are those that have no understanding of the posts they are voting on... Oh wait.

>

> I know you're in the middle of being snarky about it, but you might have stumbled on another benefit of keeping the rating system as is:

>

> Brevity. Cleaner forums.

>

> In the old forums, if you wanted your agreement/disagreement known, you would put up a short post ("No. /15char lol"), but it would just be useless screen clutter. And mildly against the forum's spam/bumping policy. And the prior +1 system didn't do much unless someone got a particularly popular post enough to show a thumbs-up symbol next to it.

>

> With the new forums, it's possible to give Yea/Nay votes to agree/disagree with something without cluttering the threads.

And only stupid/toxic people behave in this way, so let's enable them with a thumbs down button so they only have to click something once to spread their negativity throughout the forum!

Look, the simple truth is that thumbs down is a bad idea, and many forums that launched with one eventually removed it because they realized it failed to contribute meaningfully and only spread toxicity, undermining the quality of discussion and basically turning forums into a popularity contest, which is the last thing they should be.

> @Helbjorne.9368 said:

> > @Einlanzer.1627 said:

> > > @Helbjorne.9368 said:

> > > I am a simple man. I see posts about removing Thumbs Down, I Thumbs Down.

> >

> > Thank you for taking a brief moment to confirm my observation of how people use thumb down and why it's a net negative for forums.

>

> If you really wanted I could pretend I have an in-depth knowledge of the human psyche and claim that by allowing people to vote on comments it removes substantial content from the forums as the only people using the voting system are those that have no understanding of the posts they are voting on... Oh wait.

And you'd basically be right! Except voting up is less of an issue because it doesn't result in spreading negativity and is a simple way to draw attention to popular ideas.

> @Helbjorne.9368 said:

> I am a simple man. I see posts about removing Thumbs Down, I Thumbs Down.

Thank you for taking a brief moment to confirm my observation of how people use thumb down and why it's a net negative for forums.

I love the idea of player housing in MMOs, but it's hard to make it fit in right in EQ style games where the world is mostly managed by game devs, which GW2 is. It works a lot better in sandbox MMOs that are largely player-ran like Ultima Online and SW Galaxies.

I think it would be great if they would at least update the personal instances to make them useful and fun to be in.

> My take on thumbs up/down is that they are shortcuts to express a simple opinion. I think that there is no significant difference between them and the existence of the forum itself. Not having to hand write out an opinion to then be sent via the postal service in an envelope to be later published saves time just as does the ability to hit one button to say, "I disagree," rather than several.

Except "thumbs down" style disagreement usually doesn't come with any real thought or contribution and often indicates that a person has a poor understanding of the topic. It's knee-jerk.

I still think that Revenant is in bad need of a few core updates. They should either have a set of utilities tied to a "core" legend that is always available in addition to the two selected legends (i.e. a 3rd generic legend option, tied to the Invocation line, that focuses on synergy with other legends), or have a few legend-agnostic utilities that can slotted into any legend.

Secondly, they either need an additional base weapon type (shortbow really should have been core instead of tied the new elite), OR have some enhancement to the way their weapon skills work and to have weapon swap removed.

I don't think the class is really going to feel like it's in a good place until they get at least the first one.

Caster Staff autoattacks are bad for most classes due to how slow they are . Guardian, Necro, Mesmer, and Ele all have this problem. This is an example of the weird discrepancies in the way ranged weapons are designed. Some are fairly powerful while others are really weak due entirely to a badly tuned autoattack. Mesmer scepter was the worst example of this until they finally added conditions to it a couple of years ago. Ranger's longbow used to be really bad as well.

> @Panda.1967 said:

> > @Einlanzer.1627 said:

> > But at least thumb up responses generate positivity, and also help to give a snapshot of the overall support for an idea. Thumb down reactions don't do much of anything useful and only contribute negativity, IMO.

>

> Only allowing thumbs up does **NOT** give a snapshot of the overall support for an idea. It gives a misrepresentation of the overall support for an idea. If you really want to see the overall support for an idea you **ABSOLUTELY MUST** include a record of those opposed as well as those in favor. Otherwise you're denying a voice to those opposed and only getting a partial view of the overall support. A large number of upvotes doesn't equate to overwhelming support if downvotes are omitted, it only equates to overwhelming support if the downvotes are included and are far exceeded by the upvotes.

>

I don't really agree. Upvotes are a good enough gauge of the support an idea has. When downvoting isn't an option, people who aren't invested in the conversation will simply ignore the thread, which is exactly what should happen. When downvoting is an option, a lot of dumb people will just knee-jerk downvote ideas they don't understand or vaguely don't agree with, often without even having a strong reason for doing so. You could make the same argument about upvoting, but some sort of response aggregation is needed to get a sense of how popular an idea is, and at least upvoting is a positive action that doesn't increase salt and toxicity on the forums and needlessly accentuate the human tendency to fall into groupthink.

Here's a 75% upvoted comment on reddit from a while back that I agree with completely:

"The downvote system on Reddit is awful and should be removed

It's almost universally used incorrectly. Instead of being used to flag irrelevant or inappropriate content, people just use it to disagree with people - sometimes even purely out of spite. Perfectly valid opinions are downvoted to oblivion purely because they don't conform with the Reddit hivemind.

I don't see why it can't just be left as upvotes or nothing. If a post doesn't add to a discussion - just leave it be. If it's really that bad, you can report it."

My biggest issue with both thumb up and thumb down is their tendency to enable intellectual laziness as well as exacerbating the whole phenomenon of group-think, which can easily bury good ideas/thoughts and muck up discussions for very arbitrary reasons. The overwhelming majority of thumb down reactions, as well as a fair chunk of thumb up ones, are simply reactionary rather than thoughtful, and I don't see that as contributing much to an online forum. But at least thumb up responses generate positivity, and also help to give a snapshot of the overall support for an idea. Thumb down reactions don't do much of anything useful and only contribute negativity, IMO.

The mature thing to do if you don't agree with something for specific reasons is to respond to it with constructive criticism. The mature thing to do if you don't like the sound of something, but don't care enough to give it serious thought, is to just leave the topic alone rather than "contributing" in a reactionary, unthoughtful way to it by downvoting and turning people and topics into pariahs.

> @leviathan.2148 said:

> > @Einlanzer.1627 said:

> > Honestly, when it comes to core updates, no class needs it more than Revenant.

>

> How is it relevant in engi forum?

Lol. New forum problems. I honestly thought I was in the general forum. My bad!

I meant to provide specific comments on your suggestions:

Spears, tridents, and harpoon guns being converted to 1h spears, 2h polearms, and crossbows for land use makes a lot of sense, and agree that should be top priority.

I also like your vial suggestion a lot. I'd vote for the next three types being greataxe (which includes scythe skins), glove/gauntlet, and vial. I think flails could probably work as just skins for maces.

also agree that there's no reason Anet should feel pressured to launch new weapon types with a thousand different skins, and that concern over that should not be an excuse to not do it. I think starting with 5-10 different skins and building on it from there would be perfectly reasonable.

Great poll!

The bottom line is that a lot of people simply aren't intelligent enough to responsibly use thumbs down. I don't think they should be a thing.

I'm fine with it as long as they're part of the wallet. Although the wallet could stand to be reorganized to give a simpler snapshot (i.e. move all HoT map currencies to one section, etc.)

I definitely think that new weapon types are one of the top ways Anet can freshen up the game, and I agree that not adding land spears at the very least was a huge, huge missed opportunity for this expansion. I think it would be a huge boon for the game if they added the following five:

Glove/Gauntlet

Polearm

Greataxe (this could also cover scythes)

Flail

Two-handed Focus (tome, orb or some such)

Glove and gauntlet could also be away to thematically allow for wielding a single one-handed weapon, which I think the game needs. But it could be used in different ways for different classes.

IMO, many things in this game would work better if levels were removed from gear, and bonuses to attributes, armor, and attack values were derived instead from *character level + gear rarity*. For one, I think it's easy to make the case that mundane gear drops are too prolific in the game, and that a.) causes inventory management issues, and b.) makes acquisition of gear less exciting than it should be. This would present an opportunity to rethink various reward systems in the game and improve significantly upon them.

The more important thing, though, relates to the leveling experience. When gear has levels, gaining a single level above your gear's level makes your gear suboptimal, which essentially means that it's never worth your time or energy investing in your gear in the ways that make the game fun before you hit level 80 - like trying out different sigils, runes, and experimenting with different builds using different attribute combinations. Personally, I think that's a crying shame, and it also just makes dealing with gear from 1-79 less interesting than it should be.

Interesting. I would actually make the case that a more interesting change would be to reduce the over-proliferation of gear by removing gear levels and to base armor/attack/attribute bonuses on *character level* and gear rarity. Then you'd have fewer mandatory gear upgrades as you level (only upgrading rarities unless you want to experiment with different stats), which would increase the value of lower level sigils and runes and make build experimentation in general more enticing for pre-80 toons.

With the current system of gear having levels, it isn't worth investing anything in gear because it isn't possible to optimize - gear becomes suboptimal every time you level, and you get pushed to replace it every 5-10 levels. So, therefore, having fun with gear just isn't a worthwhile investment. I think that sucks, and the I think the best solution is to just remove gear levels, and only have rarity, bonus attributes, and skin differentiating pieces of gear.

This would also decrease the amount of mundane gear that drops, which would create an opportunity to revise rewards in general to be more, well, fun and rewarding.

Thematically, it makes more sense to go to Guardian than any other class, so I'm surprised it wasn't added. Honestly, I would have added it to some core skills. Guardians need better support options than they currently have, IMO. The fact that they have become pretty lackluster in the support and healing dept. is pretty absurd.

> @Fenom.9457 said:

> This is a good one we should have it at the top all the time so everyone will vote

Fair point. It would be nice to be able to edit. I'd like to see a new WvW map to replace one of the two Alpine borderlands, then the three colors could each have their own unique map.

Honestly, when it comes to core updates, no class needs it more than Revenant.

> @marelooke.9708 said:

> Poll does not include one of the most requested features: build templates.

Yeah, that was intentional because Anet knows it's the #1 thing that players want and are fussing about at the moment, and I think it's inevitable that we'll get them in the next year. I was thinking more in terms of content, but I went ahead and included trait/skill rework to see how interested players are in that.