Development Cycle Archive

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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 ffice:smarttags" />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.

Many thanks to the regulars who saved both the initial post and my following comments from last night - - you rock

Kurt "Thunderheart" Stangl
Community Relations Manager

Thank you to R2DADROID who saved my response from last night. Here is my repost:

I would like to echo the sentiments of the posters that the SWG Discussion forum's closure will foreclose player-initiated design ideas that do not pertain to a specific profession. For example: now in discussion is the idea of a feature which would allow players go go /anonymous so that they will not show up on others' friends lists. This is a feature useful to many professions, and to many servers, but I fail to see where the proposal of such an idea would go, now that the SWG Discussion board is closed.

I agree that the SWG Discussion forum is right now littered with spam and nonsense, and good ideas get lost in the shuffle. I don't necessarily oppose its closure. My question is: will there be a proper place for players to initiate discussion about ideas that developers may not have thought of first, ideas which do not necessarily pertain to a specific profession?

The proposed changes seem like a good start to improving communications between the players and the SOE SWG team.

I would also like to thank R2DADROID for saving my reply.


"4. The SWG Discussion Forum will be removed"

Once the discussion forums are gone, where are we to post our ideas?

I know not every single idea submitted on those forums is worthwhile but the discussion that comes as a result should be invaluable to a group like SOE.

Think about how many ideas have come from the forum, how many posts have been written and acknowledged. Where are they to be submitted now? On our individual galaxy forums?

Are people going to start noticing more dev activity on one galaxy forum over the other and as a result, post there?

Is this the end of open discussion for SWG?

great stuff. Glad to see you are always ready to commmunicate with the players

I can't remember if I responded or not, so I'll just do it now:

Thank god, it's about time. :-)

FWIW, although the death of SWG Discussion is a great thing, please make a forum for Starwarsiness topics since you have a correspondant who will then be homeless lol.

Hello TH and Happy New Year!!

Good luck in your work, in SWG and in your new communication plan.

Ig you are good in remembering names you know that I always support devs decision, I accuse the whiners and I am often characterized as a fanboi...you also know that I love this game...BUT it is not possible to agree with the remove of the SWG discussions forum. You know that the vast majority disagree with this and you also know that noone cares for your new plan because of the deletion of our favorite forum! We need a forum (or more new forums) to discuss general game issues that are not limited in our galaxies.

We need a forum for general game bugs (No galaxy related). For example when a new patch brings a new big bad bug in the game how we will bring it to devs attention asap? You know that the galaxy forums is not the solution.

Also KStarfire needs a forums to collect the issues he is supposed to collect and discuss and as a result an ideas or suggestion forums. The current solution cannot work. Posters will go to other forums and post general issues (game guide, GCW, GAT etc) and this will be worse... We need more forums not less !!

We also need a Space Expansion forum ASAP...you know that this is for many of us the main game..this is our dream... we want to discuss about this and other expansions...but where ??

TH it is obvious that the vast majority of the community disagrees with the closure of the Discussion forum... you should do something about it and you know it, otherwise your whole new plan will be doomed for no reason as everyone will see it as just an attempt to close out the "bad forum"!!

At the end of the day your community here are also your clients and you should keep them happy both in and out of the game! You try to open the communication lines by closing down the most popular forum?

Since the decision appears final (against your new plan that supposedly allows the community to affect decisions) my suggestion is to open up more general games forums to make them more specific: BUG forum, IDEAS forum, Expansion forum etc

At your disposal for everything...

Manogr

Once Again thanks to R2DADROID for saving my reply also. I posted this after TH replied to the original post.

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Hey. Thunderheart’s thread on the Development forum got deleted by mistake.

Here’s what you wrote in case you want to post it again when the thread gets reposted tomorrow:


I love the idea of a test plan. This will be great in my opinion. I want to test but actually really have no idea how to do it, whats required and whether i would even be willing to do it. I have played games forever i just dont know much about testing. I am anxious to help out. I know i sound like a goody two shoes. I just have grown to really like this game and think it has potential to be great.



P.S. Great word for the day " AUTOMAGICALLY " LMAO that is great.

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Did anyone save his responses ?

Won't this just lead to more thread hijacking wherever a "red" name shows up?

The SWG Discussion forum really needs to stay. You know you guys won't ever read all the server forums and there are some very valuable posts on the Discussion forum. I know the signal to noise ratio is pretty bad, but that is just how it goes.

When are the Jedi Missions going to be Fixed?

I like the idea ofgiving input on an issue that Development is focused on at the moment.

And there is no question that good threads got lost in the shuffle that was SWG Discussion.

What concerns me is how anyone can express an idea or a concern that does not happen to relate to the development thread du jour.

English is not my native language, but what is being meant by "Develepment". Is this some combination of development and ????. I am not getting it!