Goblin Squad Member
|
I concur. GW will know what they have on their plate and their project manager will set the future schedule. In the case of PFO part of that schedule will consider our input on ideascale. We don't get to dictate priorities, but we are being allowed to offer input on our preferences. But if we refrain from evaluating ideas they cannot know our preferences. The more of us who weigh in, the more accurate will be the information they have to work from. Many popular ideas are very evenly divided for or against.
Ideas cannot be accurately gauged in a vacuum, one has to look at its interaction with other things. If the idea lacks sufficient context to even begin to gauge those interactions, then how is someone to accurately gauge whether or not they think it is a good idea?
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Those weighing player sentiment in light of what they have built and intend to build have the context, as is appropriate. We have mostly cloudcastles to imagine with, but have no part in the decision whether to include X or not, or whether to adjust Y on the basis of X.
To refrain from venturing your idea, or weighing in on someone else' idea, is to presume to do their job for them from a position of ignorance. We do not know all they have in mind but they do. We should not then squelch our imaginations we should express our dreams and let those in a position to make informed decisions do so.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
There are comments whereby we can give our caveats or modify our bare vote to incorporate conditionals. A vote one way can be changed if you think again later. It is quite fluid but it is more information for them to use than they had before we used it.
Ryan has spoken glowingly of how useful it has grown, and he seemed pleasantly surprised to find it so.
Lets do our job and let them do theirs rather than deciding for them whether ours are dreams or nightmares.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I think that if GW puts out a list of what they could possibly do in EE, what they can do post EE, what they are willing to do at all, as well as a solid list of what they are not willing to do we can crowdforge better.
I won't presume to know GWs full intent, or how they planned all of this out, or if there was any major step by step planning for crowdforging. I however want to say that just tossing us into Ideascale without any foundation or guidelines has once again caused a lot of confusion. The biggest issue I see, is that a lot of people refuse to vote, or down vote ideas based on priority of implementation, rather than the viability of the idea itself, or even if they like it at all.
Crowdforging is great, but we are giant group of people going each our own direction, and like some have said people are posting ideas of their ideal MMO, without restrictions we will continue the current course we are headed. Once GW puts out any type of guidelines things should start to course correct towards a more viable crowdforging process.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
We know that Ryan reads all the ideas that get posted. A well-presented idea might spark "an interesting day of brainstorming at Goblinworks" :)
I would much prefer to be able to do more than simply vote Yes or No. Ideally, I'd like each vote to have a Unread/Read/Voted status that I can toggle, as well as a Priority assignment I can use in place of the simple Yes/No vote. The Priority should be a fairly small range, perhaps 0-5, with 0 meaning "never do this" and 5 meaning "this should be among the first things done in Early Enrollment". I should be able to filter the Ideas not just by Campaign, but also by Status, and by Priority if the Status is Voted.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I'd favour a two-stage process on Ideascale. First, just suggest and vote for things we like to start with. If an idea gets lots of interest, say (only for example) +40, then we can switch to a separate "Do you feel this popular idea which got lots of votes is a high priority?" Yes/No. At that point, the original could get "parked" or removed so that it doesn't clutter up the field.
That gets us a two-stage vote for everything. People who like/hate the idea can vote it up or down, then everyone, including people who are ambivalent can vote for priority. If something gets suggested that the devs already intend to include, but don't have a firm timeline on, they could immediately shift it to a priority vote instead of stopping it. If they have a firm expectation of timeline, they can simply say "Already on the plan"
Maybe Ryan could add in a "Priority" category, so that all of the latter posts could get put together there for tracking.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
What we need is an accurate sample size from our population to determine when something has enough Yes votes, usually 100 people work, but we might need something more substantial. After that, I agree there needs to be a second process of establishing priority based on average ratings.
What GW could do, is after the forums are up and running, add a Polling system and any ideas that generate enough interest from the sample size can be moved to a Poll. Then we can do something like Nihimon suggested, having a 0-5 indicator, and everyone vote on how high of a priority that idea is.
After each idea has gotten a greater consensus on priority, it can be removed, added to the GW que, then a new idea from Ideascale is placed in the Polling area.
Based on Activity from Ideascale and the Landrush, I would suggest:
Ideascale - Yes votes needed = 100
GW Poll - Greater Consensus = 375
The only thing you need to watch out for is possible gaming of the system, so I would suggest that before ANY idea is accepted, both on Ideascale and GW polling, that it be up for X amount of time. The numbers above though would be minimum needed participation/votes before an idea is considered and accepted to GW que.
This idea keeps it very MVP with low amount of work on GW part, but decent results over time.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
All the community can do is tell Goblinworks how important things are to us. It's not reasonable to expect us to understand the complexity of the tasks or to make the decision of what comes next. We tell them what we think, they make the decisions. As long as we understand that, there's no reason for noses out of joint.
If some of us get mad because more people want barbarians than bards, we'll just have to be mad.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Somewhere there needs to be an accounting of how much work it would be. Plus, transparently allowing the community to suggest a priority order would result in complaints when things "jump the queue", as perceived by people who follow the voting.
I was looking at the Ideascale experiment as the first step in identifying both the general level of community interest as well as how soon the community wanted it.
There will always have to be a final step that Ryan has talked about where Goblinworks says "Okay, X, Y, and Z are all about the same level of work; which do you want us to do first, understanding that the other two will be put off".
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The fundamental problem is that ideascale doesn't rank ideas according to the amount of interest but by positive votes. If an idea receives 1000 negative votes and 1001 positive votes, without question it is a more important issue than one that receives 100 positive and 5 negative because there are 2001 members of the community engaged in the topic as opposed to 105. Ideascale thinks the opposite. This is not social media, this is crowd forging and a negative is as important as a positive.
This is essentially a forum for developers and a large number of votes is a better gauge of interest than the sum of positive and negative votes.