Development Cycle Archive
Thread: In Develepment #2004-1: Changes to the Official Forum Take 2
Some of the most intersting conversations I've had with anybody about this game everhave been on the SWG discussion forum recently.
The subject: the dynamic between Bounty Hunters and Jedis.
The discussion forum is neutral territory.
Once the forum is closed, I guess we will have to talk on our respective profession forums.
Yet, by their very nature, those fourms are fairly hostile towards each other.
And we would have less participation in such conversations by people who are neither.
I just hope that if there is no central area for such conversation we can continue to have that kind of dialogue somehow.
Q-3PO wrote:
Yes, the SWG Discussion forum will be closing at the end of the week. No, it is not the end of the world, we will be better utilizing the new In Concept forum as well as the other ones. The purpose is to cut through the "noise" and get to the issues. Yes, SWG Discussion has had many valuable threads, but has also had 10 times the number of other threads drowning out the good ones.
The purpose of this thread (as suggested by Russcal) is for you add a link to your favorite constructive post from the SWG Discussion forum. Give a quick description of what made it good in your opinion. For example:
Dear Holocron, a reasonable request from a rifleman...
A long running thread that constructively looks at combat balances (and was a basis for the Rifleman correspondent).
This thread is not for discussing the closure of this Forum. Please use Thunderheart's Development thread for that.
I like how the developers think that closing the problem board will magically make the problems go away. First of all, the problem people will just invade every other board on the forum, making them less useful. This sounds like a first step to kill the SWG forums. Second of all, I like having all of the complainers in one place, because then I know not to go there!
As I see it your In Concept forum will only cater to those ideas you already have. And wont give us anyway to post stuff we think of on our own. What if someone comes up with a new profession idea that is awesome and perfect? I guess he just has to wait and hope you guys do a thread about new profession ideas or post it in a galaxy forum and hope a DEV sees it.
How about you guys start a forum that is just for us to post our own ideas as we come up with them? Not a forum for complaints or questions. Call it the "Player Suggestion Forum". This would help alot of us to accept the loss of the general discussion forum. A simple rule for it is only to post suggestions or ideas to improve the game.
PB32
"Step 1: Improve communication by closing communication avenues."
"Step 2: ??????????"
"Step 3: Profit."
Dumb.
-TZ
It was wrote elsewhere:
Yes, the SWG Discussion forum will be closing at the end of the week. No, it is not the end of the world, we will be better utilizing the new In Concept forum as well as the other ones. The purpose is to cut through the "noise" and get to the issues. Yes, SWG Discussion has had many valuable threads, but has also had 10 times the number of other threads drowning out the good ones.
Wow! I'm so glad the five days of discussion time occured.
Dumb-ASS.
-Tre
The Q quote that likens it to the beta focus forum is fine, that there will be some open threads to drop new/unrelated ideas into, but if we're transitioning from a melting pot Discussion -forum- with bad signal:noise, to a small number of THREADS that will be even less searchable and/or more cluttered, I can only see these genuinely new ideas (as opposed to refinements of existing content, which should be going into the In Dev threads, or the In Concept threads for dev-created new features or content) being lost entirely.
While this isn't a game-by-community effort here, if they're serious about even halfway considering ideas from the community for new features, content, skills, balance, whatever, there has to be a way to clearly bring the ideas to their attention.
Having a thread on 'New Suggestions' that might have half a billion new suggestions freely intermixed, and freely mixed with hijacking, ranting, and whatever else happens isn't going to be that. With the old system, if you managed to find a thread, you had it for keeps (unless the board ate it entirely). In the new system, if you find a good idea in the morass, you can't even cleanly tag it so you can find it again a day/week/month down the road, only the melting pot thread itself.
Thunderheart wrote:
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.
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This issue is of large concern to myself and many of the actual residents of TC. Many are afraid that the TC forum will become the next Disscussion Forum, if it is not regulated more by the moderators. I don't quite care for the concept of having someone sitting behind the screen with their finger on the Lock button, but it may have to be that way inorder for the community that lives on TC to have a voice on TC. Its hard enough to long on to the TC public forums and find relevant posts now. If Disscussion moves to TC like the patch/post-patch examples show us, it will only become worse.
From near the top of page one:
Q-3PO
Developer
01-05-2004 03:59 PM
_____________________________________________________________________
JediKnightMK wrote:
"I noticed the "In Content" forum is available from the drop-down list. When can we access and use it?"
We'll post topics on it this week. For those of you who were in Beta, this will also act similar to the Focus Threads. We'll have a couple general "open" type topics to catch your ideas that aren't covered elsewhere.
Kevin "Q-3PO" O'Hara
SWG Community Relations Manager
R2DADROID wrote:
"Again though R2DADROID, all 3 of your forums are already contained in the Discussion forum."
The issue is that there is WAY too much traffic in the SWG Discussion Forum and, as we all know, MUCH of it is not productive.
True to a T. I won't disagree at all.
If we have more focused forums to post on, where threads that don't fit the focus of the forums, more productive idea could get a chance to be heard.
But they are to focused. Again, you can not have a discussion, when only one side can initate a conversation. He says it's tohelp get player ideas, at least the good ones, more noticed. Well you can't notice something that isn't there. I could have probably the best idea ever to hit SWG. But guess what, I have to wait for a Dev to make a thread that might have something to do with it, so I can then post it. That is not good communication.
That's just it, no matter how productive your idea is, you can't let it be known, because you can't say it, until a Dev starts a thread about it. Who knows how long that would take?
I think that the Forum system before the changes is too confusing, and I think that the Forum system after these changes is too confusing - just in a different way.
You're pushing the problem around like vegetables on your plate, instead of fixing it.
SOE/LEC has one set of things it wants out of these Forums. Players have another set of things. Every time you mess with them to try and get your set of things, we react by dumping more stuff on the wrong boards to try and get our set of things. 
My answer is: Improve actual customer service so the Forums are less necessary; let players chat about the game without breathing down their necks; stop worry about the rest of it and get coding.
If you want a substantially better Forum system, replace Lithium. (I think Lithium knows this, like SkyNet or Colossus, which is why it ate your first thread.)