Entertainer Archive
Thread: Tiaga and all non-trolls please help
It can get very frustrating that we can't see the man behind the curtain. As a software developer myself, I know some of what must be going on behind the scenes.. But even that is just guesses. Since it's a really big issue I've tried getting information on which publish would get rid of hologrinders, but even that I haven't gotten an answer on.
However, they do hear us. There have been a number of things that have happened as a result of the community. Unfortunately, it hasn't been in game. The 10 questions, as poorly received as the answers were, was a direct response to the community, and the entertainer corrs continued insistence that there was dissatisfaction in the communities. There are some things coming. TH poking into the thread in the Musician forum, the in-concept thread for entertainers, and the new music and dances that have been coming. To be fair though, putting things in perspective we first heard about the new music and dances in the works in.. August? September? We still haven't seen that. I'm not even sure when we will. Space expansion? Some yet unannounced entertainer publish? Who knows.
The community is being heard. We just aren't saying the right thing yet. I'm not sure what the right thing is, to be honest. We'll just have to keep trying until we find out.
Part of the problem is we aren't very unified at the moment. And I don't just mean AFK vs anti-AFK. Even ignoring those factions, there are several sub-classes of entertainers. Some people are perfectly happy with a "fancy chatroom" and don't like anything that could take away from that, even if it means hanging onto something less than ideal. Some people think it's a game so there should be some actual game play involved, in the extreme to the point of being a detriment to the people who just want to be social. There are any number of people in the middle, people that like the social aspects but would like some game play to go with it. If you look past the AFK debates in the threads, you see that isn't the only clash of styles here.
If we want to be heard, we need to have one voice, otherwise it is all just noise.
As to the trolls.. The board moderators are most responsive to the "Report abuse" option under the post options of each post. Even before I was a correspondent I used this on some of the worst flames and they were put out fairly quickly, sometimes even threads deleted.
I think most the correspondents read through all the posts in their forum. (I say most because I imagine reading all the posts in the Jedi forum is a full time job.) How can someone speak for the community if they don't even know what the community is saying?
There have been a few small oppertunities to get in small things edge wise. I've jumped on those when I've seen them. It remains to be seen if it's done any good, given the length of development cycles. Eventually there is going to be an oppertunity to tackle the bigger things. Unfortunately it's not a matter of waiting for a gear in a wheel to come around, it's more like those mazes where you tilt them and a ball rolls around, only there are 30+ other people trying to tilt it a different way.
Tiaga wrote:
The community is being heard. We just aren't saying the right thing yet. I'm not sure what the right thing is, to be honest. We'll just have to keep trying until we find out.
....(snip).....
If we want to be heard, we need to have one voice, otherwise it is all just noise.
Yay! Tiaga's back! On the two points above, I totally agree. You and Ravenmist get to find out what the one voice is, help shape it and bring it out, and carry it to the Devs as best you can.
There may be people who think you guys get extra super secret dev love, I'm not one of them. I also am not so new to MMOGs that I think the community ever gets a real say so in what happens in game on a normal basis. However, in this game like all the others, there are little windows of opportunity where they aren't sure which way to go and it happens with class redesign fairly often. We just need to be there and ready when they get to that point for our classes' redesign so we can say "have you thought of this? we have this nice list here...".
They are talking to all classes about how to make them more involved with the GCW, they want Dancer and Musician to stay "social" and protect AFK leveling, they ignore player classes that seem to be at each others throats... this is what we know, corrs and posters. So let's start figuring out what our "one voice" is keeping in line with all we know.
As for the troll stomping, I think corrs should be monitoring their communities' boards at all times (maybe not 24-7, but at least once every three days)... I think that may be the hugest part of the job. So I think you and Ravenmist and all the other corrs should see the majority of the posts... I think you should be able to see when trolls are running amok in your assigned space and you should be the ones reporting them. If that's asking too much, ok. I don't really understand why it would be, but ok.
I know you've been a heavy poster in the past Tiaga (Ravenmist never has been that I can remember), but now is the time to go head cheerleader all the way. We need to have good representation, weak power that it may be... and I think you are totally capable of giving that good representation and finding our common voice. Break out the polls, lists, and colored posts!
Tiaga wrote:
Unfortunately it's not a matter of waiting for a gear in a wheel to come around, it's more like those mazes where you tilt them and a ball rolls around, only there are 30+ other people trying to tilt it a different way.
Excellent analegy, Tiaga.
Now, if we could only get the developers to realize that we are paying customers with real issues about their product and notsimply gamers on one of those free systems like COD and Unreal Tournament are played on. We are also not just members of a forum who have nothing better to do than gripe.
In the real world, manufacturers listen to what their customers have to say about their products and make changes and improvements accordingly. Why? Because they don't want to lose customers! Apparently that philosophy seems to be escaping the developers of SOE. Perhaps we need contactsin marketing instead . . .
I'm one of the original Correspondents,and I have to say I used to get more juicy tidbits than I do now. Well, maybe not in the first month after launch -- at that time, we didn't even have a Correspondent Forum; one Correspondent created a separate website on which we posted and exchanged rumors. But once the Forum got going, the initial flow of information was pretty good. In my case, in particular, that info included a robust exchange about improvements of the new buff; they relied on me and Ravenmist heavily to test that sucker.
Over the past three or four months, though, the flow of information has slowed to a trickle. I really don't know much more than you do about what's going on. I've heard one or two little tidbits that I've been asked to keep confidential, but nothing earth-shaking. My role used to be more of a two-way conduit than it is now. Now I mostly transmit requests from players to the devs. Which means, as Tiaga says, that I have to read every post in my Forum; I try to do so every day, and I respond as frequently as I can. Even in my lightly-trafficked forum, that's a couple hours a day of work. Fun work, though. 