Development Cycle Archive
Thread: In Develepment #2004-1: Changes to the Official Forum Take 2
He did the same for me too, I just added to mine a lot. 
~~Shabhaii, Mayor of Tombra, Naboo
www.cityoftombra.com
The REAL BT
(Snitter): There isn't any island, Rowf...
(Rowf): There is... there... can't you see it... Our island...just stay with me.. I'll get you there..
No single decision has better symbolized the customer service problems at the very root of this orgarnization.
"Please tell us your feedback, but oh by the way we've decided to close the Discussion forum and nothing you say will change that, because although we'll listen to your opinion we won't be influenced by it in the slightest."
Bad, bad management gets you bad, bad decisions, and this was Exhibit A.
So only devs can start threads in In Concept, In development. So you will be able to get rid of all of the other stuff just by being off topic. In test will be off topic if not testing. Yep you will have a clear feedback loop with no information but exactly what you and the fanbots want to here.
Side effects:
All meaningful discussion will move offsite (and you have lost control of it) of idea not put forward by the devs. Seven deadly sins of starwars etc..
No rants (they will go offsite all of them listing how the game is actually doing) and no dev response will provide feedback or to counter the message being loudly screamed but no one hears.
So ya got enough fanbots to support 22 servers or are youhaving an asian release.
You could add a state of the game....message board...if ya have the balls...not gonna happen is it. lol
SWG only game to fail with 100% community support cause we told ya what to thinkl
Laughing at your pathetic attempt to focus boards on only what you want to hear.
"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.
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 forums so everyone can help test what they have been involved in and to help find the issues that were unforeseen.
Since the general board is going away, I would like to suggest that some additional boards be added. There is an interesting discussion on the General Discussion board right now regarding a change to have harvesters send an email when they stop funtioning (for example, due to a resource shift). This doesn't really fit into any of the proposed board changes, so here's what I'd like to see:
I'd like to see boards for specific game "systems" (for lack of a better term) added to flesh out the ones that already exist (such as professions, GCW, and galaxies)- a board for Commerce (bazaars and personal vendors), a board for "real estate" (which would address all structures), and boards (as has been suggested) for Star-Wars-iness and species issues.
There was also a suggestion from the General Discussion to provide galaxy correspondents. I think this is a great idea with the additional traffic that the galaxy boards will be receiving, there would be someone to separate the wheat from the chaff and (to mix metaphors) distill the issues that are game-wide vs. galaxy-wde.
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Thunderheart wrote:
Introduction
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.
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Hi TH,
I realize that the SWG discussion forum wasn't meeting your needs. However, I'm not sure that eliminating the player base's ability to express new ideas and concerns to you is the best answer. The way this reads, we will only be able to discuss ideas that the devs have formulated on their own. I've seen several posts where a player has an idea and posts it in the forums and you or one/some of the other devs come and read it and like the idea. The way this reads, you are eliminating that as a possibility. I'm not insulting the devs. They are imaginative and creative, but so are we. You are limiting yourselves. If you think of SWG as a body, and the people involved in SWG as the brain, then this new process would be comparative to a stroke. Please consider adding some way where we can express our creativity to you. Please consider adding some way where the left side of the brain can still express itself to the right side of the brain.
Thank you for your time.
There is a 1000+ post thread on the SWG forum about the coloring of crafted item names. It's a pretty big thread and many, many people chime in on it daily. It's an issue that affects the entire game.
Answer those questions.....
- I'm a Droid Engineer, I used color coded naming to distinguish my many, many different droid sub-components from one another, should I post my complaints in the Droid Engineer Forum?
- I'm a Merchant, I used color coded naming to distinguish my products on my own personal vendor (droid deeds, vs seekers, vs batteries). Should I post my complaints in the Merchant Forum?
- I'm an Artisan... and GP modules and Memory modules were color coded in my design shemes, again, making it easy for me to track my components. Should I post my complaints in the Artisan Forum?
- I'm a member of the Corbantis Server with some time on Intrepid and Ahazi as well. Should I post Three separate complaints on three separate Server forums?
- Thunderheart responded to that thread and gave some inkling about why that change was made with a possibility of it being changed again in the future. If I'm not following the Dev tracker, how am I supposed to identify the hot topic discussion thread and realize he replied?
One final thought I would wish developers to ask themselves. Who do you think knows more about basketball: James Naismith or Michael Jordan?
Lets see the guy who made the game using peach baskets? Or the guy who was taught by a great line of historic coaches who root back to Naismith not that this is the place for the discussion but OBVIOUSLY Jordan. I get the analogy but bad example. Most of the rules and gameplay have completely changed since the game was invented.
Also I find it hilarious that although our opinions are "important" we have been told that although most people are unhappy with forum closer to deal with it. Sounds like bad customer service to me.......
OdwahJoel wrote:
Could someone elaborate on the Imperial Crackdown? The NPC's aren't going to be attacking covert rebels are they?
Want to try and stay slightly on topic?
ever seen sony's official everquest forums....
deja vu
Having one forum for General SWG Discussion creates an appropriate place for the community to discuss issues that affect multiple professions. If we don't have such a place, where do we discuss warping and pathing problems? Grafix and sound sound issues? Interface problems? Problems with mission terminals? Not every issue can be pigeon holed to a single profession.