Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Thread Poofage In Develepment #2004-1: Changes to the Official Forum
My point beyond poking fun at a obvious quote
was that this isn't a fight. It isn't a war. There isn't anyone to fight or take a stand against. This is a game. Specifically, this is SOE's game. We subscribe to it because we want to kill time in an entertaining fasion. Our subscription grants us to right to voice our thoughts and opinions on these forums. It most certainly does not grant us the right to dictate the structure those forums take.If SOE doesn't consider SWG discussion forum useful or constructive then it's their choice to remove it. If I, or you for that matter, are unhappy with that, then we have a right to cancel our subscriptions and kill time elsewhere.
If you wish to rant or whine visit a fansite and rant on their boards.
If you encounter a bug, use the ingame /bug command to report it. Or use the bug option on the launcher. If it's a bug relating ot a specific profession then you might also post it there or ammend a pre-existing post on the bug with your input.
If you have a specific complaint that you need addressed issue a CSR ticket ingame through the Holocron
If you have a great idea, post it to the profession(s) it relates too. If it gets enough traction there the coorisponant will surely pick it up and run with it in the coorispondants forums. If it gets enough traction there then we might start seeing posts in the 'In Concept' forum about it.
If you have a great idea, but it doesn't really relate to a specific profession, try PM'ing TH directly.
Either way, there is always a channel of communication, it's just that people generally tend to be lazy and want to simply post to one forum and expect a team of devs to be pouring over every post. I really cant see how this change could hurt SWG's development or community. The SWG Disscussions forum has been a virtual rant fest since day 1. Trying to pick the gems out of the muck is a excersize in futility.
I may have said it before, but even so, it bears repeating.
It's divide and conquer, pure and simple.
People can't effectively identify issues if we are herded into forty or more pointless forums, when the TRULY large issues show up on SWG Discussion within minutes of people noticing them.
Seperate us into galaxy forums, and you take away that sense of player empowerment.
RbT
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.
And here's how that one came about:
Marketing type: "Hmmm.. the Discussion forum is allowing all forum readers to go to a single place and share their distaste for the lack of communication and horrendous quality control standards displayed by SOE. This will not do. gagging hasn't worked so let's balkanize them: tell them to post in their individual galaxy forums, split them up, weaken the vioce of the players... Also, if we are indeed going to open up the forums to non subscribers again, we can't have new and potential players seeing the state of the game and the disregard we have for users"
The galaxy forums are certainly not the right place to post about general game issues. We know, the devs know it, and the forum admins who will then happily lock threads know it.
We need to call their bluff: nominate a forum - a galaxy forum if needs be, of maybe the General Any Topic forum- as the new Discussion forum, and everyone post there.
Endie
lorildeh wrote:
it IS a good idea,
HOWEVER, it CANNOT be replaced by "please use your galaxy forum for general SWG discussion"
we NEED a forum that can be used for "intergalactic", interracial, and interprofessional issues.
thanx
You mean like a General SWG Discussion forum??
VolatileMan
AudioOrgana wrote:
Anyonewho doesn't get what a good idea this is isn't interested in more people being heard by the Devs on the important topics.
Audio
audio....i am not reading past page 3 on any of thses threads...do you think the devs are...
to be very frank...most information i find usefull does not come from the devs...it came from other players with workarounds and solutions....i dont really care about making things easier for the devs...i want things easy for me.
at this point i really dont think the staff is capable of improving anything so all of this is pointless. they will do what ever silly thing they want as they always have.
Who didn't see this coming? I come back after a 2 month hiatus and the community is a wreck. Server populatios are near half of what they used to be.. I hardly see any people in cities... even player cities. The forums are slowly being "censored" and the forum nazi's (take no offense mods, it's a common term for this.. ur just doing your job so nothing personal) are actually calm.. I guess that's because there's no General Discussion anymore 
Don't make me cry SOE.. Just implement those immersion changes that Thunderheart listed (Empire taking over more) and I'll be happy. That's hte write step! Let's see those fixes!
Sure, everything is getting looked at. Even the 60+ page on bazaars and vendors has been read and there is a redesign on the table based on player feedback (I'll be writing up the changes later in the monthall of the feedback has caused a change in design which has pushed the changes to the next publish).
The benefit is that its all in one place and easy to find. Sure there arelots of comments and many posters don't necessarily want to read the thread, but both myself and the devs read it through.
Thunderheart wrote:
Sure, everything is getting looked at. Even the 60+ page on bazaars and vendors has been read and there is a redesign on the table based on player feedback (I'll be writing up the changes later in the monthall of the feedback has caused a change in design which has pushed the changes to the next publish).
The benefit is that its all in one place and easy to find. Sure there arelots of comments and many posters don't necessarily want to read the thread, but both myself and the devs read it through.
That's nice and everything, but DISCUSSIONS are supposed to be 2 way communications, not you posting once or twice in a thread and us posting hundreds of things on hundreds of different topics with no answers..
Someone else said it best: I might as well email my washing machine..
Thunderheart wrote:Sure, everything is getting looked at. Even the 60+ page on bazaars and vendors has been read and there is a redesign on the table based on player feedback (I'll be writing up the changes later in the month all of the feedback has caused a change in design which has pushed the changes to the next publish).
I am sure you guys have read the entire thread, but have you thought about it? I mean *really* thought about it, not just listened to the suggestions of a lot of players and found an idea that most people like which also takes care of the reason why you wanted to change the vendor cap in the first place. Has there been real discussion at the actual decision making levels about how these changes will affect each of the classes and the game in general? The plan as I have seen it so far is that the vendor cap will depend on merchant skill level. Unfortunately, this will be devastating for must of us tailors. We have well over 200 sellable schematics (not just subcomponents) which is much more than any other class. We have no experimentation at all, so our livelihoods depend completely on being able to offer a wide variety of items and colors so that someone can come to our shops and buy an outfit that they are truly happy with. Most of us simply won't be able to do this if the proposed changes are made. We will be forced into one of a few options 1) Become highly specialized (eg. only sell men's millitary wear). There are not really enough real (non-holo) tailors our there to make this viable, though. 2) Go to custom orders only. Many of us are already swamped with orders and just ask anyone who is a master of an elite crafting class what "tell hell" is like. 3) Basically become a hybrid profession. Most of us will need to become master tailor/merchants in order to continue business the way we have been. This does not seem fair for people who want do other things at the same time. It would not be a very versatile hybrid class.
Anyway, please think about these things. Maybe most people will be satisfied, but these changes would cripple an entire class! Thunderheart, I hope that you and other members of the development team will read what has been said in the tailor forums and think about what has been said before making these changes.
Thunderheart wrote:
Sure, everything is getting looked at. Even the 60+ page on bazaars and vendors has been read and there is a redesign on the table based on player feedback (I'll be writing up the changes later in the monthall of the feedback has caused a change in design which has pushed the changes to the next publish).
The benefit is that its all in one place and easy to find. Sure there arelots of comments and many posters don't necessarily want to read the thread, but both myself and the devs read it through.
How does this benefit players? If we don't read what each other writes, because you have chosen a proven and known psychologically daunting method of "communication," then you are just getting random neuron firings and not a community response.
Now, about the transparency of the Correspodent selection process, and the institution of player focus groups....
RbT
-Ares- Write:
Server populatios are near half of what they used to be.. I hardly see any people in cities... even player cities.
That would be because the game was relatively new. There is a naturally high server population of all MMOs when they come out, then it trickles down. If I'm not mistaken a dev stated before that they were at 50% population on servers at a time, where most games maintain about 20%.
It's just natural, that the average players per server on at any given time would slowly decrease over time.