Community Relations Archive
Thread: ATTN: DEVS--Request for a voting system for CU
ArythBandar wrote:
I figured this would be an apropriate place to post this. Reading the CU Update post I noticed that there were 65pages (at last count) of people supporting the upgrade or supporting the current format.I know in my guild (87 strong) most don't like this new upgrade and have huge doubts about it. Given the current description of what is going to happen I can't say that I blame them (in fact I have written a few posts about how much I dislike this new supposed "upgrade").
This is what I suggest: Let the ppl who pay $15 a month to play this version of SWG decide if they want this upgrade or not. Set up a simple vote and count them. Whether it be as simple as a Dev Moderated Thread that asks for a "Yes" or "No" to this upgrade or something as elaborate as a program where each account can vote once and they'll be automatically tallied.
I say this b/c right now it seems like you are not listenig to the paying customers. The people that pay you're salaries and help keep SOE in business. I understand that a lot of time and money went into crafting this upgrade, butI'm sure you can keep somethings (let's not go out of our way to change characters that some ppl have had for over a year on, seemingly, a whim).
I honestly don't think you're Marketing Department is doing their job. Do you think you'll be able to bring in enough people to cover the number of people who leave? (I know a lot of people threaten, and it's been done in the past, but in the 1.5yrs I've played this game I have not once felt the overwhelming desire to quit this game--I've taken my fair share of breaks, though--untill now).
Message Edited by ArythBandar on 03-20-2005 02:05 AM
Message Edited by ArythBandar on 03-22-2005 02:27 PM
We bitched about the game being unbalanced... That's an outcry... More people want this that those who don't, and Alot of those people are misunderstanding a fact:
That is the FIRST thing that has been released since the announced they would be working on it... So.... Cry more?
What about wait, and see what will it look like? Hm? Interesting you don't like something that you don't even know, only a few ideas of the base concept...
And let me quote GarVa:
Making assumptions based off just the first part of the cu documentation is a little pre-mature"
You can cancel your account if you don't like it, but we don't know nothing about it yet, there is no point flaming it.
ukapu wrote:
Almost every time SOE tries to change anything, it ends up worse than before. No matter how good something looks on paper, they manage to wrap it in a horribly clumsy and frustrating implementation. I don't care how good the CU looks. SOE will corrupt it with sloppy programming, guaranteed. Just my two cents... I'm not looking forward to the CU at all, simply because it involves more "fixes" than ever before.
Agree, from a historic perspective. 100%. That's why I'm very interested in what's changed behind the scenes, who's running the shop. If its the same ole regime, I expect more of the same. Until they start putting out white-papers and getting feedback from the community before going to code, and they actually evaluate that feedback before going to code, I expect more of the same. Unless they actually changed project leadership, that could result in some positive design changes, for a change.
The core, fundamental design of SWG was a big disaster to begin with. It's not like other games, where they bring credible peeps in to manage a project and give the team free reign to launch and code at will. No feedback evaluation needed from the community, other than tweaks. In SWG's case, we've stumbled, stumbled, stumbled, and stumbled trying to fix prior stumbles. There's problems with the credibility of the original design leadership. The track record speaks for itself. We can only hope for new design leadership and revolution, or a process that allows the community to second-guess the white-paper stage of development in a feedback loop. More of the same is more of the same.
BleuDestiny wrote:
ukapu wrote:
Almost every time SOE tries to change anything, it ends up worse than before. No matter how good something looks on paper, they manage to wrap it in a horribly clumsy and frustrating implementation. I don't care how good the CU looks. SOE will corrupt it with sloppy programming, guaranteed. Just my two cents... I'm not looking forward to the CU at all, simply because it involves more "fixes" than ever before.
Agree, from a historic perspective. 100%. That's why I'm very interested in what's changed behind the scenes, who's running the shop. If its the same ole regime, I expect more of the same. Until they start putting out white-papers and getting feedback from the community before going to code, and they actually evaluate that feedback before going to code, I expect more of the same. Unless they actually changed project leadership, that could result in some positive design changes, for a change.
I assume you mean the people in the CU forums who have seen most of it and given feedback are chop liver? And the infor given to them was cat food?
The core, fundamental design of SWG was a big disaster to begin with. It's not like other games, where they bring credible peeps in to manage a project and give the team free reign to launch and code at will. No feedback evaluation needed from the community, other than tweaks. In SWG's case, we've stumbled, stumbled, stumbled, and stumbled trying to fix prior stumbles. There's problems with the credibility of the original design leadership. The track record speaks for itself. We can only hope for new design leadership and revolution, or a process that allows the community to second-guess the white-paper stage of development in a feedback loop. More of the same is more of the same.
On at least our third Studio Head. The staff has changed drastically and they have increased the size of their programming team immensely. In fact just recently they added 20 new developers. So You have your vaunted change in leadership and you have new minds involved and you do have community involvement in a white paper style process. Seems you should be satisfied.
Ackehece wrote:
BleuDestiny wrote:
ukapu wrote:
Almost every time SOE tries to change anything, it ends up worse than before. No matter how good something looks on paper, they manage to wrap it in a horribly clumsy and frustrating implementation. I don't care how good the CU looks. SOE will corrupt it with sloppy programming, guaranteed. Just my two cents... I'm not looking forward to the CU at all, simply because it involves more "fixes" than ever before.
Agree, from a historic perspective. 100%. That's why I'm very interested in what's changed behind the scenes, who's running the shop. If its the same ole regime, I expect more of the same. Until they start putting out white-papers and getting feedback from the community before going to code, and they actually evaluate that feedback before going to code, I expect more of the same. Unless they actually changed project leadership, that could result in some positive design changes, for a change.
I assume you mean the people in the CU forums who have seen most of it and given feedback are chop liver? And the infor given to them was cat food?
The core, fundamental design of SWG was a big disaster to begin with. It's not like other games, where they bring credible peeps in to manage a project and give the team free reign to launch and code at will. No feedback evaluation needed from the community, other than tweaks. In SWG's case, we've stumbled, stumbled, stumbled, and stumbled trying to fix prior stumbles. There's problems with the credibility of the original design leadership. The track record speaks for itself. We can only hope for new design leadership and revolution, or a process that allows the community to second-guess the white-paper stage of development in a feedback loop. More of the same is more of the same.
On at least our third Studio Head. The staff has changed drastically and they have increased the size of their programming team immensely. In fact just recently they added 20 new developers. So You have your vaunted change in leadership and you have new minds involved and you do have community involvement in a white paper style process. Seems you should be satisfied.
I don't know about 3rd studio head, that would be good news. From the CU upgrade tho, unsure about the quality of that leadership, and still to back up that concern, you seem to fall to the same error that the devs have from day one...
quote: "I assume you mean the people in the CU forums who have seen most of it and given feedback are chop liver? And the infor given to them was cat food?"
You mistake giving unfocused input to the devs as a feedback loop. You're missing multiple steps in there...
It's not simply:
Step #1: Peeps unhappy and give their ideas in forums
Step #2: Devs read input and behind closed doors develop solution, and launch into beta, announcing plans roughly the same time to the community, too late to change fundamental solution's design that from then on can only be tweaked or revamped altogether.
Rather, it should work like this:
Step #1: Peeps unhappy and give their ideas in forums
Step #2: Devs read input and draft solutions
Step #3: Devs communicate proposed solutions back to the community before taking any further action
Step #4: Community gives feedback to devs on the proposed solutions
Step #5: Devs evaluate community feedback to the proposed solutions
Step #6: If the gap between the solutions as proposed and the community needs are too great, go back to step #2, and repeat as necessary
Step #7 Proceed development of proposed and ammended solutions
Step #8: Launch into beta
There's a big difference between the 2-step method that we've had all along, and the multi-step method that includes a feedback loop. If business ran with the 2-step method, failures would increase exponentially.
Happy that things are moving with a big boost to the dev team? Yes and no. Yes that things are moving, No when I see some of the fundamental design pushed at us, too late to do anything about at the core level, we can only tweak now unless they reverse themselves on their approach.
Message Edited by BleuDestiny on 03-29-2005 08:49 AM
