Development Cycle Archive
Thread: In Develepment #2004-1: Changes to the Official Forum Take 2
Honestly TH, I welcomeSOE renewed vigor to effectively communicate with us. That being said lets see if you actually come through!!
My concern is you guys will focus on the "in concept" and "in developement" forums, where only you control the topics of discussion, and ignore the forums where we the comsumers can initiate topics. I fear the only communication we will see is Mods locking threads with thier usuall vigor.
Example; If I post a request to revisit the Jedi system (which really sucks by the way)in the Jedi profession forum and that thread grows exponetially will we see active communication from the Devs concerning this? Or will we see the classic "does not promote good yadda yadda yadda" posts from Mods only?
Just curious
VolatileMan
Another big thanks to R2 for saving my post.
Oh, Thunderheart - you misspelled "Development" again!
I think it's a big mistake to close the SWG Discussion Forum, thereby segregating the forums and isolating ideas to individual professions and galaxies.
Since Beta, the Discussion forum has always been the Apollo Stage of SWG - if you can survive the criticism from all professions, you probably have a decent idea. If members of a profession have a serious, game-breaking grievance, how else would the rest of us know unless we consulted every single profession forum? If there were bugs and abuses being perpetrated, if it weren't on our server, how would the rest of us have any idea what to watch for?
Relegating us to individual profession forums will lead to one of the following:
1) Preaching to the choir, which is useless in terms of feedback, because every overpowered, self-benefitting idea will likely be met with cheers of "Right on!"
2) Spamming 20+ forums with the same thread/idea, which will just clutter everyone and anger a lot of people who want to focus on "their" issues rather than play sounding board to other professions.
Relegating us to individual galaxy forums will do the following:
Experts on certain fields from Server X will not be on hand to answer questions about their fields of expertise when a question is asked on Server Z. There are people with lots of knowledge in SWG, but unfortunately, no server has a monopoly on helpful information. A general forum that collected input from all servers was a great place to go for general info and ideas.
Anyway, I think it's a mistake to close the Discussion forum. What's the downside to leaving it open, anyway?
Closing down the discussion forum is nothing but a way for you to seperate the communy and herd them to thier seperate servers. The benefit of this is obviously to slow down the spread of discontent with this game and keep information about game bugs from spreading so quickly throughout the different servers. Your trying to silence the community and filter each server into its own tiny box that you can watch and censor. Lets face it. The discussion forum is where everyone complains about the problems they have with SWG and the last thing SOE wants is complaints out in the open for everyone on every server to read.
Where do I go now when I have an issue with the software? Tech support?(LAUGH) Only if your going to reimburse me for the month it takes them to answer at times. The discussion forum is where I spend MOST of my time reading and I get a lot of really good information from it. Yes, there is a lot of crap there. Yes, you do have to filter through it and it can be a pain.
If you want specific forums to filter through player ideas thats fine, put them in by all means. However don't take away the discussion forum and force everyone to their server forums, all it does is stifle the community.
Pfc Jiveer
AOD
Oh yeah, TH, one other thing, where are we supposed to go to discuss SWG related things that aren't galaxy specific? Am I supposed to make a posting to each galaxy forum asking the same question? Should we just take over the Game Guides forum?
You add in a Starwarsy correspondent, Thunderheart is taken on to improve communication with the playerbase, then thunderheart becomes too busy to communicate, and then the central area of communication is being removed.
The profession forums are now full of people posting "my holo told me master xxxx!!!!!! OMG how do I macro it in 3 hours"
The galaxy forums are full of "trading my holocron on xxxx for one on here"
And now, you are trying to sweep the negativity caused by the inability to address fundamental issues under the carpet, but it isn't going to disappear.
All that will happen is it will move into the other forums, where it doesn't belong, and cram them so full of rubbish, that the last remenants of anything decent go to 3rd party forums, where it will never get seen by SOE, thus turning the entire forum into a cesspit of drivel.
Yes, the SWG Discussion forum is a mess, but removing it is not the answer, you still need a central area for discussion.
Raster wrote:
Closing down the discussion forum is nothing but a way for you to seperate the communy and herd them to thier seperate servers. The benefit of this is obviously to slow down the spread of discontent with this game and keep information about game bugs from spreading so quickly throughout the different servers. Your trying to silence the community and filter each server into its own tiny box that you can watch and censor. Lets face it. The discussion forum is where everyone complains about the problems they have with SWG and the last thing SOE wants is complaints out in the open for everyone on every server to read.
Precisely. Discontent breeds more discontent. This was a painful lesson learned by Everquest. The closure of the discussion forum was inevitable. It should never have existed in the first place. I am happy to see it go butI am disappointed that the SWG devs did not learn from SOE's past mistakes. It does not bode well for the future of SWG.
Because my old post was deleted I repost it (thanks to R2DADROID)
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 think player will just move to the Game Guide Forum instead.
All the other changes sounds very good and I am looking forward to give you my feedback on various development issues.
Just gotta say that I like what you're doing by trying to focus comments and keep them constructive and on-topic.
But I also have to say that it's not all about you. The SWG Discussion forum is nice for us to have to talk about stuff that isn't necessarily meant for the Dev's. Forcing us to only use our galaxy forums and whatever else is left basically sucks. Thanks for taking our open discussion and communication line away.
Guess you gotta give some bad with all the good. I just don't understand, doesn't make sense.
i think its good to close it down. yes itll be a shame to loose a place to post ideas. but think about it, are they even getting read. im certain that the devs cant read all of it. and even if they did, how can the focus on ANY of it. TMI (too much info) its a bad thing. if they post ideas and lets us ADD to them, modify them or at least input to them. they can CONCENTRATE on each idea that much better. thats the point i think TH is getting accors to close the discussion down. devs can do a good job making improvements, and we are focussed in our thinking in concept and beyond. i applaud this. now it wont be pie in the sky, itll be clear cut, we are going here, what do you need from this idea. we can tell them, we KNOW they are reading it, and then we can see the result and feel we had a part in it.
never again wondering, did they read my idea, did they like it, did they read i hated it. you know they are more likely to see you point and acknowledge it. good job SOE.
TH -
Perhaps I'm missing something, but it seems that you are saying the only threads that players can initiate a thread in "will not get developer attention" .... how does this "create clear channels of communication from the community to the development team." ??
I understand that we're going for a structured method for the discussion and evaluation of new ideas... but these "clear channels of communication" it would seem will only exist for ideas that are NOT player ideas/wish lists. And surely we've come up with a few good ones so far?
Some (if not most) ideas, wish lists, bug discussions, are not galaxy specific - some are not concerning the GCW, some are not of a given professions... some are simply overall game ideas. Is there any hope of a thread where we can post out "cool new ideas" and enjoy the input of players across many galaxies which may still get some "developer attention"?
Who thought thiswould be a good idea? You're removing the one place that we have to post our own ideas, come to post stories of game play, to vent about bad ideas, to praise about good ideas, to just ask questions. I honestly don't understand the thinking of the the Devs at times. "You all" seem to have great "book" smarts, but lack a decent amount of common sense, at times.
Also, with a bit of admitted snideness, why are you even asking for our opinions? Many a time have I seen "We have such-n-such idea to implement. We plan on doing it next week.Please post your thoughts on it." Even though a majority of players will say, "No, bad idea." surprise, surpise it's implemented. So why bother asking our opinion on the removal of the Discussion Forum? Do you insist on adding insult to injury?
Thanks R2DADROID 
I'm going to again state that I think closing the SWG discussion forum is a bad Idea.
1) I also think it will lead to increased Thread Hijacking when I red name pops up.
2) Server discussion boards are where you go for ideas and events centered around your SERVER not the game itself.
3) No centralized player created thread for ideas from PLAYERS to PLAYERS... (not expecting any DEV to read them)