Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Thread Poofage In Develepment #2004-1: Changes to the Official Forum
Sorry about this guys, but I accidently deleted Thunderheart's thread about this. I was taking care of someone who was posting not so nice words and instead I hit the wrong button.
TH will repost it tomorrow and again, I apologize for everything that was lost in that thread.
Revolt by the Mods against the changes !... Errr whatever those changes were. 
Oh well, lets hope Thunderheart remembers what he wrote.
LOL! I was beginning to wonder there for a second... I was reading some posts, trying tofilter all the "Oh, you are closing SWG Discussion... What a bad idea!" posts out to get to the heart of what TH was saying and his response and WHAM!
Along comes Jeassa.
Don't cross her guys! (j/k Jeassa... :smileyhappy
I suppose I will wait until tomorrow to post my ideas.
Introduction
The first new changes to Star Wars Galaxies in 2004 will be coming to the official web site and community forums. The SWG team is working to involve the quality of community involvement and the best way to do that is to improve the quality of the communication. The first step is to create clear channels of communication from the development team to the community. To do this, we will announce upcoming changes to the game on the web site, describing in detail the nature of changes in game design and implementation as well as the scheduled date projections. As discussion topics change and evolve, we will list all of the changes on the web site in one convenient location.
The next step is to create clear channels of communication from the community to the development team.
To accomplish this goal, we will be changing the forums to channel information through three stages of game development and community involvement. For each of these stages, we will announce a start and finish date for accepting comments and also label the discussion topics in a way so everyone understands how and when their contributions will be considered by the development team.
The community's development will follow this path:
In Concept: "In Concept" is the first stage of game development and it can be considered "blue sky" thinking and brainstorming. The idea is to just consider all the possibilities and angles of the announced topic. During the dates listed in the post, the development team and the correspondents will keep track of all the great ideas and suggestions, catalogue them and send them to the game designers in a neat package so that they might be properly considered for the game.
In Development: The next stage is "In Development". When a game development topic reaches this stage, it means the design document is being produced and will be posted for community comment. At this point, the community can see what was included, what has been designed and it will be open for discussion. The difference at this stage is that this is the "polish" stage of design. The "blue sky" is gone and now the focus is to tweak, fill in gaps, uncover problems. No sweeping changes will be made unless something critical has come up and jeopardizes the integrity of the design. Any "big" changes made to design ideas will have to have very strong community support to be considered.
In Test: When the game topic reaches this final stage, the game developers will announce the status of game feature, including any changes that had to be made during its creation to accommodate technical details. Additionally, we will post a basic "test plan" in the Test Center forums so everyone can help test what they have been involved in and to help find the issues that were unforeseen.
Proposed Changes:
In accordance with the new community development path, the following changes are planned:
1. The Announcements forum will remain and function as it exists in its current form.
2. Add an "In Concept" forum where only In-Concept discussions will occur. Here, SWG developers will post new threads announcing planned changes and the dates in which conceptual suggestions will be included in the process. Community members will not be able to create new discussion threads, but may post their suggestions, comments and contributions in the appropriate thread. Forum moderators will assist in maintaining the integrity of In-Concept topics.
3. The Development forum will continue to work as it currently functions and simply be renamed to understand its role in this new process. Developers can create new threads and community members can post their suggestions, comments and contributions.
4. The SWG Discussion Forum will be removed to help focus game development discussions and make sure that community suggestions, comments and contributions are catalogued in forums that will be read and tracked by the development team. Please use your Galaxy forums for general SWG discussions.
We want to keep the best parts of the SWG discussion forum, so we encourage comments about what other types of forums would be a benefit to the community with the knowledge that they will not get developer attention.
5. The Game Guides, Galactic Civil War, Events, Professions, Galaxy Trade, Server Galaxies, Tech Support, and "Other" forums will remain in tact and function as they exist in their current form.
6. The Test Center Forum will remain intact and function, as it exists in its current form. Additionally, as official game development topics progress through the community development path, the "In-Test" threads will be posted in Test Center.
Request for Comments:
The community is invited to make comments and suggestions about the proposed changes from Monday, January 5th through Friday, January 9th.
Focus:
Please feel free to comment on any of the topics listed in this post.
The SWG Discussion forum is being closed. If your comment is regarding the closing of the SWG forum, please focus your comments on forum changes we might make so that you can communicate critical information to the developers and not arguments as to why it should not be closed.
The SWG Discussion forum will be archived so players can find and read their old posts, but as a development tool, the forum isn't working. With so many people and so many topics, much of useful information is swallowed up in the high volume of threads.
Kurt "Thunderheart" Stangl
Assistant Community Relations Manager
Here it is:
4. The SWG Discussion Forum will be removed to help focus game development discussions and make sure that community suggestions, comments and contributions are catalogued in forums that will be read and tracked by the development team. Please use your Galaxy forums for general SWG discussions.
We want to keep the best parts of the SWG discussion forum, so we encourage comments about what other types of forums would be a benefit to the community with the knowledge that they will not get developer attention.
Focus:
Please feel free to comment on any of the topics listed in this post.
The SWG Discussion forum is being closed. If your comment is regarding the closing of the SWG forum, please focus your comments on forum changes we might make so that you can communicate critical information to the developers and not arguments as to why it should not be closed.
The SWG Discussion forum will be archived so players can find and read their old posts, but as a development tool, the forum isn't working. With so many people and so many topics, much of useful information is swallowed up in the high volume of threads.
OMG I LOVE YOU WibbleNZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And that is the only time you will ever hear me say that.
Bah! You beat me to it hehe. Here's a post of his he made later on as well in that thread:
I noticed the "In Content" forum is available from the drop-down list. When can we access and use it?
You can access it now, but there isn't anything posted yet.I'll be posting current topics to In-Concept and In-Development all this week and next.
It wont be an open forum per se though. It will work like the In Development forum - - Developers will start threads and players will post. This is so we can put up focus threads and collect the responses in a organized way.
The big challenge is getting past the mirage of the SWG Discussion forum. For the most part, when players post ideas, especially really good ideas, there is a need inside to be acknowledged and you want to believe that your ideas are being heard. I empathize with that frustration from personal experience. The "mirage" part comes in when players post on the boards and assume that the idea can be included on merit, but it just isn't so. There are design and development schedules and if a reallyexcellent idea is posted, but not in coordination with the long term development path, the idea gets swallowed and lost. I'm trying to stop that by focusing the way information passes back and forth between the virtual divide.
With this new method, posters will know when we are just beginning to consider new ideasand can postopenideas with the comfort that they will genuinely be included - - thats "in concept". Then there are othersubjects where the topic is in progress and the type of information that can be included is limited in scope because of the time and effort needed to implementchanges - - thats "in development". Then the game feature will be closed for discussion while its coded and loaded and then we go to test. When things are "in test",we'll be able to post a test plan for the community and that way, everything will be included in the process.
Thats not to say open discussion shouldnt be encouraged because thats how really cool ideas are incubated and grow. The question is how best to foster that.
New changes sound great, the sooner they can be implemented the better IMO. Better signal to noise ratio can't possibly hurt us.
Thats exactly what we want to do
I understand, that the Discussion Forum ist not usefull as a Development tool. But players need a general discussion forum. The server-forums are not general discussion forums, they are server releated. We need a forum to have general discussions and ask questions.
I agree, but SWG discussion isn't the answer. We have most game topics covered. All the professions, the GCW, PA's and TC all have Correspondents that can involve their respective parts of the community and when big problems come up or really good ideas surface, the correspondents are on hand to collect the ideas and email them to me. Kstarfire needs a home for sure.
Im hoping some community ideas will grow in this thread that will help that new direction reveal itself.
Suppose a player has an idea, but it is on an issue that is not a listed topic in one of the new forums. Where, if anywhere, do they post that idea?
Likewise, suppose a player is troubled by some aspect of SWG they feel needs improvement. Where, if anywhere, do they post that concen?
As for the ideas, players need to save them and post them when the idea comes up, otherwise the reality is that their ideas probably wont be included - - timing is everything.
For issues, yes, that is a concern of mine and again, Im hoping the community will suggest something exciting.
LLJK_Griz wrote:
So, should we post the pages and pages of "this is a terrible idea" in here or wait until TH reposts the thread tomorrow?
Yah, save that for tomorrow.
WOOHOO!
Down with SWG Discussion!
WibbleNZ wrote:
I went through my cache and have the first two pages saved in html, though I have no idea if they could be integrated back in to lithium or not.
I wish.....but no not quite that lucky. Well, at least TH has the original now, and will be able to repost it once he gets into work tomorrow.
Again, thanks WibbleNZ - and all the rest of you guys who save posts. I was really afraid I was going to have to bake him cake or something horrid.