Goblin Squad Member
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I think the crowd forging process is great. It is really going to allow the players to get what they want rather than getting a load of crap that leaves very few people happy (See space combat in The Old Republic.)
My fear with crowd-forging though, is that if you simply ask people what they want, they will always ask for the most intricate and expensive to design feature. But if the devs make the decision on what is too time consuming or not they may release a version that takes six weeks when the majority of the population actually wants them to take six months for the really cool version.
And often I see really cool ideas shot down because "They aren't as important as feature X!" when feature X will take months to develop, and the really cool idea may only take a few days.
Therefore what I would really like to see is the devs give the players some estimates on how long they forsee projects to take.
Like:
Feature A Is Likely to Require-
5-8 days
3 Members of the art team, and 2 programmers
3000$ in wages and resources combine
Feature B Is Likely to Require-
3-5 months
5 art team members, 2 programmers, and a system's designer.
90,000$ in wages and resources combine
This kind of information will be critical for us to work with you in a meaningful way. It will take us from kids looking through a toy store window pointing out what looks best regardless of price to people who are involved in the process of making the game, and able to make meaningful decisions on how resources are allocated.
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Goblin Squad Member
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agree, with two comments:
-this should apply much more to alpha testers. Theory-crafting on the forums is great up to a point, but it's not until you actually try the features that you know if they are actually fun.
-choosing between large and small projects is still hard since we want to have it all. Any choices presented to us may be better if they are directly comparable, such as "halfling vs gnome", "more combat animations vs more emote animations" etc.
But I absolutely agree with the main point. Preferring the best over the good enough is meaningless unless you know the costs for both.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would almost like to see the development process resemble the skill training process a bit. Basically we have a big list of features they could develop and implement sitting there with the estimated time and cost of those features sitting there as well. We then go in and vote what ends up on the queue next.
Obviously they would have to oversee the process a bit to make sure the art team isn't twiddling their thumbs while we get a bunch of code intensive features or vice versa but as close to that process as they could get would be awesome.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the crowd forging process is great. It is really going to allow the players to get what they want rather than getting a load of crap that leaves very few people happy (See space combat in The Old Republic.)
I could write a paper on how crappy(wish I could use harsher language here) SW:TOR's handling of space combat was. I think I may have brought this up early last year, but the number one thing GW should avoid is releasing half baked content, period. If a project doesn't get finished in time, it doesn't make it in the game. If your original vision will take too long, unless it is a key feature, put it on the back-burner and do it right the first time.
When Masthead was butchering Earthrise they released a road-map, but they ended up going the route of DCUO and only fulfilling a few items late. I would like to see GW release a queue of features, but not include any dates, except maybe for the next item in the queue. Instead of knowing "settlements are coming in march" we know "settlements are coming after creature taming and creature taming is 5th in the queue. And watchtowers are first in the queue and coming in 2 weeks." various crowd-forging votes can influence the order of the queue.
This is one game where I would not like to see parallel development goals, I would like to see things move linearly to minimize bugs and incompatibilities. If you only add one thing in at a time, then make sure it is working properly before moving to the next thing, you are much less likely to run into issues.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree no hard deadlines but estimates are valuable. They should be able to tell us whether a feature will take 3-8 hours or 3-8 months. Just allow a large margin of error and make it clear that the unexpected sometimes happens and estimations are not deadlines.
Having that estimation is essential to making an informed vote though.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Oh absolutely not. People should say, I don't think X should be included because it will detract from gaming experience but not because "I don't care about it!" Who cares? If enough other people don't care it will never make it to the front of the queue. I can't stand when people shoot down ideas on the grounds that they don't think they are important.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We should balance what information we want back from the devs with how much time we want them actually working on the game.
It is one thing to pop in with a word of guidance here and there and a whole different thing for them to calculate estimates and costs for all the ideas we are spouting.
True we might be helping them think things out and true they are going to have to make those estimates for things they decide are needed for project management, but having to do so for all the ideas we in our idle time can think of is going to add a full time staff position to their overhead.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Possibly they could help people visualise the information in a hierarchy of systems diagram, with drilled-down sub-features?
Also side-track: With systems such as Alignment those will consist of hard rules and soft rules (how players are responding/interpreting to flags I assume) so some mediation on that balance will likely be a good area for crowd-forging: There is always some fuzzy space to observe.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We should balance what information we want back from the devs with how much time we want them actually working on the game.
It is one thing to pop in with a word of guidance here and there and a whole different thing for them to calculate estimates and costs for all the ideas we are spouting.
True we might be helping them think things out and true they are going to have to make those estimates for things they decide are needed for project management, but having to do so for all the ideas we in our idle time can think of is going to add a full time staff position to their overhead.
That is not at all what I am proposing. They shouldn't waste time worrying about an idea unless it is practice and has enough support that it actually merits addressing.
Obviously there needs to be a certain threshold an idea crosses before devs bother to address it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think you are on the right track, Andius. If several people get to suggesting something (sometimes suggestion threads take on a life of their own), it would make more sense for the community to be given an idea of how the development and implementation might go; that would be far better than having a popular idea ignored or funtionally dismissed with a "maybe later" kind of comment.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Being- That leads to a huge problem I would like to avoid which is every discussion about a creative idea devolving into a debate about how much time it will or will not consume. I haven't seen that become a huge problem here yet but I remember massive debates over wasting devs time on features I might be able to program myself given 24 hours access to the game code. Or just an hour or two if I knew how to write game code. >.>
We are not game developers, and we don't know how long these features would take. On the more popular ideas dev feedback would be invaluable. Let us focus on what we know, which is what features we would and would not like to see. Not how long it will take to build them.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Programmers are notorious for not being able to make good estimates at how long a particular project will take them; but they're much better than anyone else.
Being a programmer, I think it is less "not being able to make good estimates" and more making good estimates based off their vision of coding but running into an issue.
As an example, there was a piece of code I was working on that should have been easy enough to do from a *design* standpoint, but when I got to programming it I ended up taking an extra 3 weeks to nail down the exact correct way to implement it so it fit with the actual design.
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Goblin Squad Member
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From Ryan Dancey's interview on TenTonHammer.com:
To make this work we need a level of transparency that is rare in the gaming industry. We can't have a lot of "secrets" or "surprises". And people will need to educate themselves on what can be done with the resources available; some of the best ideas are unfortunately impractical despite their merits.
I am all for the transparency of the crowdforging concept, but do not understand how or why GW would expect us to educate ourselves as to resource practicalities. I, for one, would find that type of self-education impractical or impossible (I do not know this stuff to start with, how would I teach it to myself ? ;-) ) I'm still hoping that the devs will take time to educate us where applicable.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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From Ryan Dancey's interview on TenTonHammer.com:
To make this work we need a level of transparency that is rare in the gaming industry. We can't have a lot of "secrets" or "surprises". And people will need to educate themselves on what can be done with the resources available; some of the best ideas are unfortunately impractical despite their merits.
I am all for the transparency of the crowdforging concept, but do not understand how or why GW would expect us to educate ourselves as to resource practicalities. I, for one, would find that type of self-education impractical or impossible (I do not know this stuff to start with, how would I teach it to myself ? ;-) ) I'm still hoping that the devs will take time to educate us where applicable.
The good thing is, it's a safe bet there are a lot of people already in the community that have IT backgrounds, or development backgrounds, or specifically game development backgrounds that will be able to assist and provide insight as well.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Programmers are notorious for not being able to make good estimates at how long a particular project will take them; but they're much better than anyone else.Being a programmer, I think it is less "not being able to make good estimates" and more making good estimates based off their vision of coding but running into an issue.
As an example, there was a piece of code I was working on that should have been easy enough to do from a *design* standpoint, but when I got to programming it I ended up taking an extra 3 weeks to nail down the exact correct way to implement it so it fit with the actual design.
If you typically complete projects in the time you expect to, then you are falling victim to the planning fallacy.
Chief Technical Officer
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We won't be simply asking people to tell us what they want, and we won't be expecting you to evaluate the business implications of a bunch of different things. Mostly, we'll be presenting you with options for which we've already determined the scope, like these things I totally just made up:
Should we spend the next month developing new options for the crafting system or new merit badges for the archetype system?
We're launching a new wilderness hex—what features should it contain?
We're working on commerce this month. Should we build an auction system, or focus on a wide variety of NPC traders?
Which animal companion we should implement next?
You'll be influencing what we do, how we do it, and the priority in which things get done, but you won't be making massive business decisions by committee.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Programmers are notorious for not being able to make good estimates at how long a particular project will take them; but they're much better than anyone else.
Hey! I resent that. I, for one, am rarely off by more than a factor of two!
I think the common rule of thumb is really that you should always multiply a developer's estimate by two. Personally, I try to overestimate whenever I can. I'd rather set aside time for when something turns out to be a lot more complicated than expected, rather than assume everything will go smoothly - it never does.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My input as to how to make the crowdforging process better..
The only thing I can suggest on this is to give everyone equal and obvious opportunity to contribute. I suggest a sub-forum for Pathfinder Online that contains crowdforging votes and threads that are heavily moderated.
I'd like to see a forum dedicated to 1 thread per crowdforging issue. Vic, in the examples you listed it would basically be 4 different threads. The first post would be a detailed proposition, and the posts to follow would contain ideas to contribute to it. If it's a vote between several things it would be nice to have a moderated vote option where all of the options are presented, and if the majority of people posting agree on another option then the option is considered and possibly added to the vote choices.
The biggest issue I've had so far is that I don't have the time to read through the bulk of posts in the Pathfinder Online forum. I'd like to, but I work pretty hard. Also.. a Dev Post filter would be amazing because sometimes I just want to see what the various paizo staff have to say on a topic. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just because Vic posted this:
"We're working on commerce this month. Should we build an auction system, or focus on a wide variety of NPC traders?
Which animal companion we should implement next?"
I thought I would chime in with something off-topic and random... I really hope to see what region you're in effect prices. Being able to hire NPC traders who sell goods for you, or have people purchase things from your store at a price you set would be great. Have auction houses limited to a few different locations and have different stock in them... etc.
It makes for a far better and varied market in my opinion!
We won't be simply asking people to tell us what they want, and we won't be expecting you to evaluate the business implications of a bunch of different things. Mostly, we'll be presenting you with options for which we've already determined the scope, like these things I totally just made up:
Should we spend the next month developing new options for the crafting system or new merit badges for the archetype system?
We're launching a new wilderness hex—what features should it contain?
We're working on commerce this month. Should we build an auction system, or focus on a wide variety of NPC traders?
Which animal companion we should implement next?You'll be influencing what we do, how we do it, and the priority in which things get done, but you won't be making massive business decisions by committee.
Ah come on Vic! :P
If you guys don't rein us in we run to the farthest edges, every time ;)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Programmers are notorious for not being able to make good estimates at how long a particular project will take them; but they're much better than anyone else.Hey! I resent that. I, for one, am rarely off by more than a factor of two!
There are also the schedule slips that occur because the CEO decides the project really needs to include this new feature that wasn't part of the original design.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You'll be influencing what we do, how we do it, and the priority in which things get done, but you won't be making massive business decisions by committee.
Thank goodness! Everyone thinks direct democracy is great, until they actually see it in practice =) I much prefer the experts making the important decisions.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Generally how it works.
There's a large version of this hanging on the wall in our tech department.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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The planning fallacy is largely ssuming that delays that you don't know anything about won't happen. It means adding up all of the phases that you know about, and calling the total time the expected time to completetion.
If there is a 25% chance of an 8-day delay, the proper expected time is two days after all of the known time costs, even though there is a 75% chance it will be done sooner.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The planning fallacy is largely ssuming that delays that you don't know anything about won't happen. It means adding up all of the phases that you know about, and calling the total time the expected time to completetion.
If there is a 25% chance of an 8-day delay, the proper expected time is two days after all of the known time costs, even though there is a 75% chance it will be done sooner.
Or, if your comany has a name like Blizzard, the proper expected time is "When we say it's done."
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Chief Technical Officer
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I'd like to see a forum dedicated to 1 thread per crowdforging issue. Vic, in the examples you listed it would basically be 4 different threads. The first post would be a detailed proposition, and the posts to follow would contain ideas to contribute to it. If it's a vote between several things it would be nice to have a moderated vote option where all of the options are presented, and if the majority of people posting agree on another option then the option is considered and possibly added to the vote choices.
I think you can expect that a lot of the specific crowdforging decisionmaking threads will look a lot like this.
Also, even though I'm focusing on the "specific choices" aspect of crowdforging in this thread, I don't wish to imply that we won't also have eyes on general discussion threads. I'm confident that there will be concepts wholly generated by the community that percolate through the messageboards and eventually wind up in the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A well dressed woman steps into the office of the soon to be named trade charter company...
"Well morning all nice to see everyone here. Has Ethel brought in the coffee and donuts yet. Well let hope she get here soon. Let us start...
Today we are going to discuss our charter name and no DB you may not change this discuss to what type of donuts we will be eating today that choice was made yesterday and may not be changed today."
Walking to a screen she begins to make a power point demo, " I believe that I have found the perfect name for our charter company...
the power point demo shows black words on a white background that read..
Massively Multi-businesss Official Results Production Group
a click is heard and another screen is show
MMORPG charter company