Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Player Correspondent Opening: Bio Engineer
Just as Thunderheart is doing, my suggestion is to click on the candidate's names and look at a random sampling of their posts in the forum. Things I looked for included:
1) Clear, concise language. Someone who keeps the Oompanese to a minimum. This is double-edged PR job. Written communication skills are key.
2) Willingness to form an opinion, even a strong one, and stand behind it.
3) Proof of tolerance of others' views on a subject. Patience with posters who have ideas that are not well thought through or contrary to their own.
4) Willingness to listen, receive input, and incorporate it.
5) Thorough knowledge of the Bio-Engineer profession. I would prefer someone that has experience with chef tissues, tailor tissues, and most importantly, a thorough understanding of the cloning system and generational cloning in particular.
6) Has the free available time to devote to the job. My expectations are one thorough post per week on the state of the profession and taking time to keep the stickied content fresh, relevant and error free.
7) Reasonably devoted to the Bio-Engineer profession.
8) A overall poster rating of 3 or 4 stars. If you have a 5 star poster rating, you either haven't posted enough or else you are not pushing the envelope.
These are just my criteria...feel free to develop your own.
So far, we have
NancyJ
ArthurDentOnBria
Vshbaa
Anyone else?
Message Edited by Nemthang on 05-05-2004 02:28 PM
Hey guys 
As a longstanding elder on these boards and Webmaster of SWGBE, I'mseriously thinking of applying for the position.
I've watched the Bio Engineerevolve tremendously since launch and with the clone revamp popularity skyrocketed. BE is perhaps one of the most challenging and yet most enjoyable professions in the game. I've played almost strickly as BE from release and never got tired.
You have all seen me promoting the Bio Engineer website, and some of you, I know, disagreed with my methods but I've always been here asking and answering questions day in and day out.
Now I ask of you all, should I go for the position of BE Correspondant or not?? Please don't be shy to respond, I'm looking for voices and won't take offence to opinions!
Thanks,
Jim
"So far, we have
NancyJ
ArthurDentOnBria
Vshbaa"
You can add to that
JayceMilam
0smspiff0 (me)
For me personally, I am more of a lurker (now), but, as you can see from my posting history, I tend to attempt to make my posts count (answer a question or get our profession information). To be honest I just dropped BE temporarily (doing smuggler and commando and needed the skill points) but regardless of how my application for correspondent goes I will be getting master BE again since it is the most fun I have in the game. I actually don't think that dropping it (with the intention of getting it back) should be a strike against me - all it means is that I get to re-experience working my way up to master again, which is something that most masters in all professions forget :-).
I can't imagine the thankless task that being the BE correspondent is likely to be. With a profession that is seriously flawed in its implementation, developers being shifted to other projects in the face of these issues, and then having to maintain a "positive attitude?". It looks more like they are looking for someone that can sugarcoat their inability to seriously address the issues rather than one that can communicate them.
It is a simple fact that the majority of the BE community finds significant problems with the profession as it is currently implemented and the response from the customer service/developer teams far from reassuring, helpful or consistant in any measure except failing to address these issues. How a correspondent can "represent the BE community" and "present the issues" as well as presenting the dearth of progress as positive eludes me, and I am at least reasonably sentient.
If a correspondent is to represent the BE community, they need to do so without having to maintain an SOE-Approved stance on the issues. They need to tell us what they have gotten back in aswer to our concerns without having to tread lightly around SOE's policies, and they need to be honest with both the community and the developers/CS staffers about the concerns and the answers.
I hardly see this as possible, given SOE's heavy-handed attitude towards the user community; the correspondent is all too likely to face pretty significant restraints on their efforts.
The correspondent means of determining the user community's attitudes, concerns and responses really is as much a means of controlling how much SOE needs to respond to as any clear channel of communication. Most other games have developer read the forums themselves, seeing the concerns expressed by the players directly as well as the ideas and responses, workarounds and effects on the player or the community. To think that a real sense of the community can be had by having a single player do this for them leaves them divorced entirely from the feeling and pulse of the community they most need to understand, from their unique understanding of the mechanics and programming. The example of the repeated major failures in attempting to revamp major systems (the CH fixes, the "validity checks" for pets, the recent "wonderful new crafting process") shows the lack of understanding this separation engenders, and the best intentions and major efforts of the developers are wholly lost in the ensuing debacle.
I think Talthazar did his best, and I have no doubt that the new correspondent will as well. I strongly feel, however, that the correspondent approach is a poor substitute for an active discussion with the developer community.
LLan
Message Edited by Akelan on 05-06-2004 10:00 AM
Akelan wrote:Most other games have developer read the forums themselves, seeing the concerns expressed by the players directly as well as the ideas and responses, workarounds and effects on the player or the community. To think that a real sense of the community can be had by having a single player do this for them leaves them divorced entirely from the feeling and pulse of the community they most need to understand, from their unique understanding of the mechanics and programming.
LLan
Message Edited by Akelan on 05-06-2004 10:00 AM
I dont know what games you've been playing but I havent played a single class or profession based MMORPG that didnt have an appointed volunteer to covey the class issues to the developers.
If SOE wanted to do as you say most other games do and have the devs sit and read the forums all day then they'd either have to employ *at least* 6 new devs just to read the profession forums - either that or not have enough staff to actually implement the changes we all want.
Message Edited by 0smspiff0 on 05-06-2004 11:40 AM
Message Edited by 0smspiff0 on 05-06-2004 11:46 AM
Message Edited by 0smspiff0 on 05-06-2004 04:48 PM
Message Edited by 0smspiff0 on 05-06-2004 01:21 PM
Boy, there's some serious campaining going on here.
But lets just tackle this last one though.
0smspiff0 wrote:
"The correspondent system is necessary but so is discussion with the devs."
...
SOE is trying (19 question thing for example) to improve their communication- but some of it has to fall on the communities shoulders to make it so that there is something to have a dialogue over. The fact that nobody has reponded to BEs dissapointment (anger etc...) over the BE "Advanced" Guide Friday Feature is probably because nothing constructive can come out of it. Look at the pages and pages of rants in the DE forum (from their past revamp) with nearly no replies.
...
Nearly no replies... well we don't get any from the devs.TH wouldn't tell us he was even working on the BE FF (he found the time to tell the smugglers though).They could have respondedto one of the more reasonable posts about the FF by telling us they were going to make another go at it.Or at least correct some of the glaring errors (and not just the spelling...)
And the reply they gave our question in the 19 question thing was an absolute joke.
0smspiff0 wrote:
...
You are right we doneed someone who can distill the communities concerns into questions that do not have a lot of wiggle room so that we can get the anwers we are after.
Just to be clear. We've never gotten any of answer's we've been after since we got fixed over 6 months ago. And quite frankly, I don't think there's anyway one of our questions can be phrased that will get a straight answer from a dev.
They lied to Talthazar about the pet checks in Publish 7, and had his name on that travesty of a Friday Feature.
To whomever "wins" the coveted Correspondent position; There's alot of hard work ahead to fix this profession. I hope the winner is up for it.
PS. I hope it's NancyJ 'cause she's cool.
NancyJ wrote:
I dont know what games you've been playing but I havent played a single class or profession based MMORPG that didnt have an appointed volunteer to covey the class issues to the developers.
If SOE wanted to do as you say most other games do and have the devs sit and read the forums all day then they'd either have to employ *at least* 6 new devs just to read the profession forums - either that or not have enough staff to actually implement the changes we all want.
Message Edited by meroc on 05-07-2004 09:28 PM