122667-suggestion-make-a-returning-player-faq-thread-here-in-general

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If for no other reason than keeping people from making the same 4 topics over and over.  The most common questions people keep asking are: 
How is the population?
Are bots gone?
PvP?
Game dead?
It'd be nice to see a thread to encapsulate these and to promote those discussions in ONE area of General Discussion.  I might be selfish in this particular request, but I'd like to see it done because I'm pretty tired of seeing folks log in just to ask about how dead the game is, or how crappy they remember it, or how terrible bots were -- especially when these problems have been either solved or are being alleviated.
 
Hopefully a large thread with lots of positive feedback from active players will be better than the same threads created 5-6 times a day.	
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			What's funny is even if you did this we would still see the same 5 threads each day cause no one ever reads pinned topics. 	
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What's funny is even if you did this we would still see the same 5 threads each day cause no one ever reads pinned topics. 
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How is the population?
Are bots gone?
PvP?
Game dead?
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Creating a FAQ thread and pinning it gives it the appearance of an official stance.  None of those questions are anything that Carbine can or will give a straight answer on.  Even without a direct answer anything they pin could be seen as an endorsement.
 
The last time they commented on the population the wording used was some of the the worst marketing spin I've ever read.  Near about everybody laughed and called BS.
 
The answer to the second question is an unequivocal "no".  (You're never going to get rid of bots).  Some progress has been made, systems have been beefed up but they really can't share any details on how they've dealt with it.  Until the game population returns to a more sustainable level it's too early to tell if their anti-bot measures are effective.
 
The state of PvP and their plans to address the shortcomings have been laid out in other threads.  Typically new threads asking about it will get locked and redirected to the existing threads.
 
As far as game health goes Carbine can't endorse anything other than the fact they're still operating.
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I'm not asking Carbine to make an official "this is how it is, period" thread.  I'm asking them to merge/designate a player thread into one big "Hey, I'm back, how's the game" thread to avoid the mass of cluttering posts we've seen in the past week or so.
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Ok, that's a bit different.  Not sure where I land on the agree/disagree spectrum.  On the one hand it would help tidy things up, on the other a bunch of "hey I'm back!" threads are a positive sign.
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Personally, I don't mind a bunch of new player posts where people ask if the game is dead, are the bots gone, PVP, etc.
 
On the one hand, a lot of their concerns have been addressed.  And removing these posts from the front boards doesn't necessarily help, because a LOT of people are coming to these boards to read the responses.  That's why people are coming, because these are the concerns of the lapsed community and new potential players who've heard negative feedback and are, at the very least, giving the game a shot by reading up on it.
 
That's why I really don't mind going to every single thread and saying, "No the game isn't dead, far from it!  Yes, the bots are, at least visibly, gone!  Yes, I play with a lot of people when I get to play!"
 
And, of course, on the other hand, a little information goes a long way.  When someone asks about the PVP situation, there's no shame in saying, "No, it's not fixed yet.  Fixes are coming, in fact coming even before Drop 5, but the changes coming are big and involved."  If we lie or fake it, and that guy comes into the game, hates the PVP situation, and leaves, he's wasted his 10 day trial and will have some chance of never coming back to try it once the changes are made.  We have to be honest and play a long-ball game, making sure people have the information they need.  Those people asking about population NEED to know the state of the PVP servers, or they'll log in and literally see no one (as opposed to the people who manage to see no one on Entity somehow).
 
So I'd rather the posts remain as they are.  I have no problem repeating in every single one that the game has fundamentally gotten better, addressed a lot of the concerns that make up Wildstar's negative feedback, and that more is on the way.  I also have no problem being up front about the state of PVP and recommendations for having a good time in the game.
 
I suppose that's why I'm against an FAQ type thread that tries to lump it all together.  It's necessary to have posts up asking about the state of the game that we answer, so that when people visit the forums to check if they should fire up a trial and give it a shot, they can rest assured that they weren't the only one who heard that feedback and had those concerns, and also that many of those have been addressed.	
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			From a moderation standpoint, we tend to let the new player / returning player threads go because while they may seem like duplicate topics, that is not always the case and the player is looking for a unique-to-their-situation response. Giving them a stuffy canned "hey look at this pinned topic" gives off the impression that we don't really care, and that we can't be bothered to give them a personalized answer. I would prefer to answer these topics (or have the community answer) so that they can get a feeling for how things are and how the community is, instead of just pointing them to a canned response. :) I get that it might be frustrating to see 'negative' posts and threads, but they're just as important to respond to as our positive ones and the community typically does a good job at helping these players out. 	
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