Goblin Squad Member
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After reading this thread in the alpha forums, and the reply of Ryan, I simply have to ask.
Question from Zayvian about /emotes:
Any chance these will eventually be followed by animations and sounds?
Answer from Ryan:
@Zayvian - if the Crowdforging process directs us in that direction, yes.
Here is the thread: Still confused about Crowdforging
So when will the crowdforging get a more official form? As in some sort of poll, where directions can be chosen, directed by Ryan or someone else from GW?
Or do we need to keep packaging our wishes, ideas and concerns in many a (worried) thread, as we have done till now, where the loudest and most outspoken get the most say, untill you guys apparently pick something, and then after the fact tell us "that this and that has been succesfully crowdforged?"
If that is true then crowdforging is nothing more then your usual alpha/beta forums, where people submit bugs and ideas for improvement of anything, from details to general ideas, and hope some of it gets fixed/implemented.
There are in fact a couple of very recurring themes with the players, like a better AH UI, and more functional forums on the Goblinworks site. Been going on for *months*. Not asking for the sky here too imo. But somehow that does not seem to be crowdforging stuff. It has been noted, but either explained away (AH issue) or "no ETA"
I understand time-constraints and limited development resources: I also understand Dev-priorities overrule player priorities. But at least there could be some sort of official crowdforging white-board, where our ideas/wishes/priorities are acknowledged by the team, and get some sort of priority-ranking by you guys, with information as to where this idea stands in the hierarchy of things. With frequent updates from your side and input from our side.
To end in full sceptical mode, I feel that the few times that Ryan cried out "we have crowdforged this!", those were things that were simply in the pipeline already, were pretty much no-brainers to begin with, and just happened to be implemented/finished right in conjunction with our "crowdforging wishes".
Is it early in the morning? Could someome check the time for me? The time please! (I am enjoying the game, just so you know, ask Dr. Jekyll later)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I know I have been very vocal on the issues I feel are most important. However yes I would VERY much like some actual formal system for this "Crowdforging" that is constantly touted. The Ideascale site isn't terrible but I would expect to see some form of reply, resolution, or close out to the items that have reached certain thresholds or are diametrically opposed to already stated design intent. Otherwise it is like it is now, no one really takes it seriously.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I know I have been very vocal on the issues I feel are most important. However yes I would VERY much like some actual formal system for this "Crowdforging" that is constantly touted. The Ideascale site isn't terrible but I would expect to see some form of reply, resolution, or close out to the items that have reached certain thresholds or are diametrically opposed to already stated design intent. Otherwise it is like it is now, no one really takes it seriously.
It seems to me that being loud, vocal and articulate(yet civil) is the only way to crowdforge currently. Or rather, help out somewhat. I am glad that I am not alone in wanting a more formal approach to the proces.
I must add that I have always been a bit dubious about the concept, because I feel that a solid design doc, including a rather clear path of development, is actually the only way to create a game or piece of functional software. It is the designdoc and goals that were stated by Ryan, that I fell in love with, and I do not think any crowdforging can or should be able to influence that.
I realize there are greater goals that are set (in stone?), smaller goals and then the iteration of them, and timelines. But I think these are all so interwoven and connected and dependant on eachother, that most of this has to be charted up front else you get nowhere.
SO I feel that even in this stage, I wonder what us players actually could and should be able to influence.
Pair this with a small team, limited development time and limited funds, and it becomes even harder to believe that we in any way could change this "path" without incurring more cost, and a more in-efficient development.
I feel that we simply see the truth of this in the fact that something like a functioning AH and better forums are still on the backburner. Or even something as simpl as being able to mouse-scroll in the UI's of the game.
So crowdforging to me is nothing more then a bit of lip-service at this point. And maybe it can never be more then that.
Personally I think the best we can do, is play the game, submit bugs and give feedback about the content that is already there, i.e. certain spells being under or over powered, stuff not working well and such. And we are doing that already.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There is no project on earth that ever succeeded by putting every single decision up to a vote. I don't feel like we're being ignored at all. I think that what we as a group want has to be balanced against the things that are essential, and the things that can be accomplished quickly.
The programmers have been heavily focused on server stability for a couple of months, which I'm pretty sure was at the top of everyone's list. Many of those essential things are going to be invisible to more than 99% of the players. Things like their logging tools for the devs. Others will be essential, but not the sort of things that people think about when asked what needs to be done first. Like account management tools. Meanwhile, a lot of people wanted the new player and role kits, as well as Destiny's Twin ready ASAP. Companies and their settlements are essential to the War of Towers that is intended to start in a few days. That has been giving them plenty of headaches and they are still doing large parts of it manually.
Those things all took away from the Auction House. It's perfectly fine to be unhappy that our preferred priorities are not the ones that are getting dealt with, but don't imagine that crowdforging isn't a part of what's happening every day.
Surveys! I've said it before, multiple times, its the best way to go. Don't feel like spelling it all out again so here is the short version:
The Forums are for idea generation and testing the waters.
Ideascale is terrible for anything, really.
Surveys are great for democratically seeing which way the community wants to go on a design point or how the community would like to see some things prioritized. Provided the surveys are done well by someone who knows how.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would just like to know if Crowdforging is what we did with those things Cal mentioned, i.e. clamoring on the forums for Player Packs to be ready before EE and such, and that this is the way we will be going forward with "crowdforging", or that we get a much more formal and streamlined approach to it from now on.
Including surveys, for instance, as sspitfire points out. Or my whiteboard/timeline thingy that gives us at least some clue about how we are impacting the iteration of features.
That sticky thread from Januari 2013 about crowdforging mentions Crowdforging Polls: that sounds promising. Time to update that thread!
Maybe I am too impatient and I just got triggered by that non-answer that Ryan gave to Zayvian about wether we will see animated emotes at some point.
Ok, basically, are we *in* that crowdforging proces already, or do we get something else now that EE has started?
For instance, as for Zayvians request about animated emotes: I find that this is a good question, however a typical no-brainer as to the *if* it will be implemented. Off course every self-respecting MMO will have to have animated emotes at some point. So what I expect us to Crowdforge, is the actual *when*. And this is something that the devs have to lay out for us, since animated emotes are undoubtedly dependant on a myriad of other features/pipelines. We do not know those.
We can just ask and wish and complain for now.
So what I expect from Crowdforging, is that the devs at some point, are at a crossroad, where they can honestly say: we could do this or that: both are in the realm of possibility; we just need your preferences.
And that this gets polled or something like that and then gets put on a whiteboard, with updates, that we can comment on, so that (if possible) small changes/slightly different iterations can be made.
(Humongous Blog about Crowdforging incoming so that I can put my foot in my mouth).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree with Tyncale in all questions and also shares his sceptical attitude to the crowdforging methodology and can hardly add anything to it but some elboration on two points.
True crowdforging input can hardly be done on anything done in neartime, I expected more on the level:
"when we add two more player races next year which two of these ten, should we focus on"
and
"Next half year we will expand the graphics on the toons, should we prioritize getting gear such as hats and boots visuals or carrying weapons animations"
Calling the raid on Gol' and Hammer for crowdforging makes me lift an eyebrown, that was more of fieldtest data gathering for adjustment purposes rather ...
And the clamouring about AH isn't crowdforging as much as bug reporting.
Crowdforging or not, the team must have a plan for what they are working on for at least 3-4 month (or something) as stuff needs to be piped between different areas of expertise (of course barring stuff such as the stability issues).
The second point I want to raise is related to blog and patch frequencies.
In my experience communications (blog entries) are better when they are shorter as any feed-back is more focused and easily handled.
I know the work of patch building is very involved and work intense but for keeping the fire of interesting happily burning and also for testing purposes it is way better with a small patch every week and a bigger one prepared for last week in the month (or perhaps at the start, dont know which is best for marketing purposes).
And to end this drapa I really want Ryan to take a more pro-active stance throwing stuff at the forum (do it at the GW to entice us to use them). The team is excellent in answering detailed questions (yay to Stephan, Bob and Lee) but policies, outlines and stomping fires could need a bit more adressing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The second point I want to raise is related to blog and patch frequencies.
In my experience communications (blog entries) are better when they are shorter as any feed-back is more focused and easily handled.
I know the work of patch building is very involved and work intense but for keeping the fire of interesting happily burning and also for testing purposes it is way better with a small patch every week and a bigger one prepared for last week in the month (or perhaps at the start, dont know which is best for marketing purposes).
And to end this drapa I really want Ryan to take a more pro-active stance throwing stuff at the forum (do it at the GW to entice us to use them). The team is excellent in answering detailed questions (yay to Stephan, Bob and Lee) but policies, outlines and stomping fires could need a bit more adressing.
Hell yes. Frequent patchnotes, even about trivial stuff, will do wonders in order to give people the feeling that they are heard and stuff is being done.
I am also missing Ryans "deeper insight" posts, that seem to have been mostly replaced with infrequent and very curt "setting you straight" posts.
I was actually fine with that when Bonny was hired, since I expected that she would now become the person to "massage" the masses and feed us information, but I have a feeling that she has been mostly tied up into Customer Service work, rather then Community-building work, apart from the Bonny-events at the start (many months ago now).
So communication has in fact been less in the last months, which I mostly account to
1) crunchtime
2) most stuff has been said already and
3) just not that much happening exept uninteresting but extremely important network coding that we would not understand anyway. :)
I hope that in the future, we will see real crowdforging polls, lots of patchnotes that we can discuss and much more presence of Bonny.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So communication has in fact been less in the last months, which I mostly account to
1) crunchtime
2) most stuff has been said already and
3) just not that much happening exept uninteresting but extremely important network coding that we would not understand anyway. :)
4) XMAS Break
5) The response to any dev feedback (even really positive stuff) is generally a big batch of whining about some other feature not working or how the game is not going in the direction that person wants|
Goblin Squad Member
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5) The response to any dev feedback (even really positive stuff) is generally a big batch of whining about some other feature not working or how the game is not going in the direction that person wants
Oh, I thought that was crowdforging!
;)
I think there has been a lot of positive, constructive and civil feedback too though.
I don't really see the poor usability of the auction house UI as a crowd-forging item. It just plain needs to be improved.
It would have been crowd forging if Goblinworks had let us play with a demo or test version of the UI before releasing it. Then they would have had our feedback (which is near unanimous) and Saved them the trouble of releasing a feature that most people don't bother using now (because of the hard to use UI).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think there are two parts to crowdforging
a) listening to us
b) being accountable to usThe first one is in place for a long while in my mind. The second one won't happen even if it was 'our' money that we spend for the kickstarter.
I'm not sure if Tyncale asks for a) or b)
That is an interesting view on Crowdforging, you seem even more dubious then I it seems, considering your part B.
I think they are listening to us for sure, but this is true for any game in early development that allows players in pre-alpha and alpha.
I expect Crowdforging to be a new proces, that empowers us more in shaping the game and Ryans words seem to imply as much. The words in that sticky also talk about Crowdforging Polls and such.
As to B: I am certainly not agreeing with you there, that such is part of Crowdforging. Not sure why you would think that.
Quote from Ryan from one of the emails I got:
Unlike a lot of MMOs which are delivered to players in a nearly-complete state after 5-7 years of closed development, we are pursuing a very different path. Our goal is to begin play with the minimum features we think are necessary to start getting useful feedback from the community. From this foundation, with your input, we will jointly Crowdforge the game by enabling you to directly influence our designs and the prioritization of features.
The upside to this plan is that you will have a real opportunity to affect the course of the design and the way the game develops.
What I am asking is, if we get a more formal approach to this from now on, or if it will still stay in the form of "us wishing, and hoping and asking and complaining and posing our ideas on the forum, and Goblinworks, after a while, shouting "Hey, thanks for crowdforging!".
As per the quote of the last email I got from GW:
Due to your help Crowdforging we've been able to get core game systems aligned with your expectations and to verify that the various systems are working as intended (or within parameters we'll accept in the short term).
I feel most of what is accomplished currently is stuff that just needed to be done first, and anyway, no player input needed. Not saying that the community hasn't been instrumental in keeping the enthusiasm flowing, by all sorts of projects. I think its cool we helped "get core systems online", just not sure how. Or even if its true.
Personally I can not believe that the current iteration of the game was not layed out already in detail.And the fact that Archers got Stationary is just Devs reacting to Feedback. Nobody could seriously call that crowdforging.
Hell, maybe we did change the course on some features: if that is true then even more so I think it would help if this got streamlined into something where our feedback and the changes are more visible.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Running down what TEO has discussed multiple times of what we would like to see finished first:
#1 - HIGHEST PRIORITY - Company/Settlement Banks
#2 - Social Aspects, like Company/Settlement Chat
#3 - UI Updates (Making it easier to find companies, showing encumbrance/power/stamina, options for key mapping, sound functioning, smoother controls, etc)
#4 - Being able to see everyone from your company/settlement/alliance on your minimap.
#5 - Being able to heal those that are Red, but allies.
The following are things talked about that a lot of our members want to see ASAP:
#1 - Caravans (Carrying loads/people from point A to B)
#2 - Gushers
#3 - Territory Based Laws
#4 - Enchanting
#5 - Static Dungeons (Adding stuff to Emerald Spire or the TK Dungeon)
#6 - Actual Material Gain from Escalations (chest at the end)
Essentially, currently, we are looking for better ways to communicate and find each other in game, as well as content we are specializing in.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Running down what TEO has discussed multiple times of what we would like to see finished first:
#1 - HIGHEST PRIORITY - Company/Settlement Banks
#2 - Social Aspects, like Company/Settlement Chat
#3 - UI Updates (Making it easier to find companies, showing encumbrance/power/stamina, options for key mapping, sound functioning, smoother controls, etc)
#4 - Being able to see everyone from your company/settlement/alliance on your minimap.
#5 - Being able to heal those that are Red, but allies.The following are things talked about that a lot of our members want to see ASAP:
#1 - Caravans (Carrying loads/people from point A to B)
#2 - Gushers
#3 - Territory Based Laws
#4 - Enchanting
#5 - Static Dungeons (Adding stuff to Emerald Spire or the TK Dungeon)
#6 - Actual Material Gain from Escalations (chest at the end)Essentially, currently, we are looking for better ways to communicate and find each other in game, as well as content we are specializing in.
I like that list a lot. I would add to your point 2, the ability to see a Characters Company name under his name, and his settlements name. That sort of quick recognition seems crucial in a game like this.
I also miss fast Travel in your list: the ponyrides that Stephen talked about a long time ago. I think that should come before even Caravans, though I think at the same time, Blinds and SAD should be implemented. Gotta give the bandits also something. Unfortunately, those are probably really complicated features.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Tyncale
My description of crowdforging was how I read your original post. This might not have been what you wanted to communicate - but be aware that some can be interpreted as b)
I agree that there should be a more streamlined approach and better communication. For exmple in a blog mentioning when x or y was done because of input from us - this would go a long way.
I also see the AH as one of the bits that need serious attention - but I'm confident that GW has taken this on board and is working on it - just not sure when.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Crowdforging
"We want a bigger initial map"
- got a bigger map
"We want some time to build economy before full pvp/WoT
- ok (though that was probably a relief to then giving them time to work on stuff before husks
"We want the Mac client in Alpha rather than EE"
- got it in Alpha
"We want to know schedule of development"
- thread posted showing priories that week/month/year
"We want class packs and DT for EE"
- got them
This is off the top of my head without checking forums. Crowdforging had been going on for quite sometime. What it sounds like is that your are asking for more accountablity in the Crowdforging process, such as "how many of us does it take to ask for something by such and such a date to get it". They won't do that. The description of the Crowdforging process was never going to be "mob rule" or "survey says". They were never putting control of the project in our hands, only the ability to influence it. I think you could find a number of people who feel their efforts have affected some part of the game.
When I really want an idea reviewed by the devs, I put it up on Ideascale because I know they monitor it. Same goes with GW forums. We get a lot of information about what priorities they are working on, what's next, when things are ready but it most often comes as a dev reply either here or at GW or in chat in game which means that most people aren't aware of it. I agree that GW could do a better job of keeping us informed in a more formal manner of their schedule and what they have changed due to the crowd forging process
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Goblin Squad Member
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Personally, I'd also like to see a little bit more formal approach to the crowdforging process in the near future.
Meanwhile though, we can also "metaforge": crowdforge the crowdforging process as the devs are throwing a lot of resources towards fixing the the game (and consequently have less resources to spend elsewhere).
In a sense, the polls that Sspitfire has done in the past can be viewed as part of this metaforging process. While the polls have gathered data about various things pfo, it has also been tested as a crowdforging tool. What it might be good for and what it isn't suited for.
We could have a thread that tries to itemize features we want in the game ( like the lists above ) and this way, as a crowd, contribute towards the next player-made poll (leaving Sspitfire or someone with lessened burden on their shoulders).
Or we could try something different and see where that gets us. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Adding to the crowdforged list of Daeglin - these are two I was involved in:
- changes in raw materials needed for +1, +2 and +3 and having higher ranks assigned to them (there is a thread somewhere here that started that)
- changes in the formula that determines the growth of resources - debatable if it was a bug report or a suggestion to change it to something else - but something close to my formula was implemented and so far seems to work
Yes - and I also among many suggested multiple times improvements to the AH and wait for that ... but I'm sure it will come
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Goblin Squad Member
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Tyncale
My description of crowdforging was how I read your original post. This might not have been what you wanted to communicate - but be aware that some can be interpreted as b)
I agree that there should be a more streamlined approach and better communication. For exmple in a blog mentioning when x or y was done because of input from us - this would go a long way.
I also see the AH as one of the bits that need serious attention - but I'm confident that GW has taken this on board and is working on it - just not sure when.
Ah, ok Thod, I understand. I never meant to say that we are entitled to stuff. Just to get more clear how we are going about crowdforging from this point on.
Daeglin, all that stuff you mention is just players clamoring for the stuff that was promised during the Kickstarter. Asking for a schedule and getting one? How can you think that is the same as
enabling you to directly influence our designs and the prioritization of features.
?
DT was pretty important for the success of the Kickstarter: off course this was a prioritized feature from the start and I always felt that Ryan planned on giving us that feature asap. No crowdforging, just players clamoring for their stuff.
I have no illusions that the players can just Vote for stuff and if 75% wants something, they get it. How can you read that from my post?
I am hoping for more clarity on the "crowdforging proces" as we start EE.
But hey, if crowdforging is just clamoring for stuff on the forums and then hope and wait to see if it goes in, then fine.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Adding to the crowdforged list of Daeglin - these are two I was involved in:
- changes in raw materials needed for +1, +2 and +3 and having higher ranks assigned to them (there is a thread somewhere here that started that)
- changes in the formula that determines the growth of resources - debatable if it was a bug report or a suggestion to change it to something else - but something close to my formula was implemented and so far seems to work
** spoiler omitted **
Thod, I actually participated in that thread and was the one that advocated making +3 Refining recipes a lot more expensive in resource cost, because the cost was so low compared to +2 stuff, that I expected a flood of +3 on the market(making +2 stuff useless) because people would be trying to make +4 and +5 all the time. The OP of that thread indeed advocated for a better level progression of recipes.
Both of these proposals were indeed implemented soon after by Stephen. I was very pleased by that, but still consider this to be no crowdforging. This is just feedback from players in an alpha. I do not consider this to be, and I quote again:
enabling you to directly influence our designs and the prioritization of features.
If that is crowdforging then I can say that other games have done Crowdforging before PFO. That is just development on the go.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think we have different thoughts around what crowdforging means both to ourselves and for GW. Dont take me wrong, I think this process is interesting and enriching.
It is just that to me much of the ting above is not so much crowdforging as much as bug hunts and adjustment in my mind. I enjoy that, but when I supported this KS I got other impressions, if they are totally wrong or unfounded I like to know, it wont change my feelings or engagement in the game.
It is just that I'm used to know the limits of the projects I work in so I don't spend energy on stuff thats never going to be considered. Those limits can change but then Its is just to adjust for that.
Perhaps I just arrived at a bad time because it seems there was more info flow from Ryan before Alpha went public.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I don't really see the poor usability of the auction house UI as a crowd-forging item. It just plain needs to be improved.
It would have been crowd forging if Goblinworks had let us play with a demo or test version of the UI before releasing it. Then they would have had our feedback (which is near unanimous) and Saved them the trouble of releasing a feature that most people don't bother using now (because of the hard to use UI).
That's pretty much what is happening, isn't it?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thod, I actually participated in that thread and was the one that advocated making +3 Refining recipes a lot more expensive in resource cost, because the cost was so low compared to +2 stuff, that I expected a flood of +3 on the market(making +2 stuff useless) because people would be trying to make +4 and +5 all the time. The OP of that thread indeed advocated for a better level progression of recipes.
Both of these proposals were indeed implemented soon after by Stephen. I was very pleased by that, but still consider this to be no crowdforging. This is just feedback from players in an alpha. I do not consider this to be, and I quote again:
enabling you to directly influence our designs and the prioritization of features.If that is crowdforging then I can say that other games have done Crowdforging before PFO. That is just development on the go.
I personally thought that the changes that they made were significant examples of crowdforging. The game already worked as it had been designed, and could have been left with the crafting progression that were in place. Many games have worse crafting mechanics than that iteration. Many players were content with the system in place.
But GW didn't just stop with good enough. They took player comments, along with the significant back and forth from the forum threads, and they made significant changes to the item progression. I think you sell your contribution (and GW's receptiveness to our suggestions) short.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm thinking there is probably informal and formal crowdforging, and we have seen quite a bit of the informal type, and it looks like Tyncale (and others) would also like to see a bit more of the formal type.
While I think a lot of this may "seem" like how typical development happens, but rarely do fans have such an effect as we do this early in development. This is part of the reason why I think it becomes more of something we can call Crowdforging over the "typical."
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CEO, Goblinworks
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We have been talking a lot about how to formalize some aspects of the Crowdforging process. What we really want is a very widespread participation in such tools so that the input is not just coming from a segment of the player population.
One thing we are pretty sure we're going to attempt is putting survey questions on the login screen. Every player will therefore see them and have a chance to respond and since there's nothing else to do but wait, we think a lot of folks will read and vote. You'd only see each question once so you couldn't disproportionately weight the results by logging in a bunch.
Figuring out exactly what kinds of questions go into that process will also need some work. We like Ideascale as a way to harvest good questions but we also have a lot of either/or tradeoff questions of our own that we need to formulate.
We also have been talking about how we're going to build a product backlog - basically the list of things that we could work on. That is harder than it sounds because some things are bug fixes, some things are polish to existing features, some things are iterations on existing features, some things are new content for existing features, some things are all new features. For example if we put "Dungeons" on the same list as "Fix the duration of the condition icons on the combat UI" the difference in scope between those things is so great that they're really incomparable.
It is also hard to get Crowdforger feedback on technical matters. We can't educate the community enough about MMO project workloads and our unique toolchain to enable them to give us usable feedback about a lot of the "under the hood" things that we're working on that optimize and improve the game. Without sending thousands of people to Goblinworks University we cannot Crowdforge those kinds of tasks. But we have to do those tasks and they have either/or impacts on the kinds of things we can Crowdforge so we need to figure out how to give some visibility to the community about them.
Lastly we have a very broad development plan that we want to stick to until we convince ourselves that it's the wrong plan. That is the plan that takes us from where we are right now to the point of having fully developed Settlements and territorial warfare. A deviation from that very broad plan would require us to rethink literally everything we're doing. One of our tasks in the 1st quarter of 2015 is to try and provide some visibility to the community on that broad plan so people have a sense of what we're trying to build. That will help prune ideas that are good, but out of scope for the game we're trying to build.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thanks Ryan. I understand that reaching a large part of the population will be very important. I like to do polls like sspitfire's but you may not get a good slice of the population with that.
Though I am sure sspitfire has alot more sensible things to say about this. Professional pollers have a lot of tools, I think. :)
I think a good idea would be to make answering the polls in the login screen optional, and not a required step before you can continue the log-in proces: I have seen something like that with another MMO and I heard that many folk just ticked any box, annoyed, to get through that step asap. This may be less of a problem with the EE-folk but still. Seeing a question only once helps a lot too, to avoid annoyance, so that's good.
I am glad to see that ideascale is used more as a gathering-place for ideas, and not so much for the voting there; so the voting(or rather polling) will go by other means, after GW has deemed an idea feasable and can then formulate it, fit for a poll, as I understand it.
Looking forward to the broad development plan too.
Edit: wanted to add that I hope that the resluts of those polls will be published, or that we get an official thread for each poll, where we can discuss it a bit further.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...Daeglin, all that stuff you mention is just players clamoring for the stuff that was promised during the Kickstarter. Asking for a schedule and getting one? How can you think that is the same as
enabling you to directly influence our designs and the prioritization of features.?
DT was pretty important for the success of the Kickstarter: off course this was a prioritized feature from the start and I always felt that Ryan planned on giving us that feature asap. No crowdforging, just players clamoring for their stuff.
I have no illusions that the players can just Vote for stuff and if 75% wants something, they get it. How can you read that from my post?
I am hoping for more clarity on the "crowdforging proces" as we start EE.
But hey, if crowdforging is just clamoring for stuff on the forums and then hope and wait to see if it goes in, then fine.
Perhaps we have a different understanding of what crowdforging is. I believe any conversation we have, either with each other or the devs, that results in the devs changing their plans or their priorities, or actually confirms they are on the right track, is an example of crowdforging. The schedule? That wasn't information they were sharing with us, but after people "clamouring" back and forth, Ryan shared an aspect of how GW operates that I don't think any of us had any inkling of back then. Kind of like letting us audit a course at Goblinworks U. for a day. Was it a ground shaking new feature of the game, or a massive change in GW policy? No. But it was an example of GW listening to us and making a change - and in that example, they actually went with the "minority" (back before Rath was focussed only on grass :P ).
Sometimes clamouring can be productive, sometimes it is just noise. For example, the AH interface keeps coming up, despite GW saying they would revise it. I suspect most people raise it again because they simply don't know that. I don't know how much of what you said you meant literally, and how much was hyperbole, but I do believe crowdforging started long ago and is ongoing. If you would like to see a more formal approach, then a thread like this is one way to crowdforge it.
@Ryan When you put a GWU hoodie up on the GW store, make sure you save one for me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Running down what TEO has discussed multiple times of what we would like to see finished first:
#1 - HIGHEST PRIORITY - Company/Settlement Banks
#2 - Social Aspects, like Company/Settlement Chat
#3 - UI Updates (Making it easier to find companies, showing encumbrance/power/stamina, options for key mapping, sound functioning, smoother controls, etc)
#4 - Being able to see everyone from your company/settlement/alliance on your minimap.
#5 - Being able to heal those that are Red, but allies.The following are things talked about that a lot of our members want to see ASAP:
#1 - Caravans (Carrying loads/people from point A to B)
#2 - Gushers
#3 - Territory Based Laws
#4 - Enchanting
#5 - Static Dungeons (Adding stuff to Emerald Spire or the TK Dungeon)
#6 - Actual Material Gain from Escalations (chest at the end)Essentially, currently, we are looking for better ways to communicate and find each other in game, as well as content we are specializing in.
I like that list a lot. I would add to your point 2, the ability to see a Characters Company name under his name, and his settlements name. That sort of quick recognition seems crucial in a game like this.
I also miss fast Travel in your list: the ponyrides that Stephen talked about a long time ago. I think that should come before even Caravans, though I think at the same time, Blinds and SAD should be implemented. Gotta give the bandits also something. Unfortunately, those are probably really complicated features.
I believe that list is missing AH upgrades. I think the reason it's not there is that TEO has enough people on most of the time to do without an AH, or coin. For many of us, that's not the case. The list is, and was presented as, what TEO wants. That's fine. I'm just saying that my personal want list would include a functioning AH and coin-based economy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Crowdforging
"We want a bigger initial map"
- got a bigger map"We want some time to build economy before full pvp/WoT
- ok (though that was probably a relief to then giving them time to work on stuff before husks"We want the Mac client in Alpha rather than EE"
- got it in Alpha"We want to know schedule of development"
- thread posted showing priories that week/month/year"We want class packs and DT for EE"
- got themThis is off the top of my head without checking forums. Crowdforging had been going on for quite sometime. What it sounds like is that your are asking for more accountablity in the Crowdforging process, such as "how many of us does it take to ask for something by such and such a date to get it". They won't do that. The description of the Crowdforging process was never going to be "mob rule" or "survey says". They were never putting control of the project in our hands, only the ability to influence it. I think you could find a number of people who feel their efforts have affected some part of the game.
When I really want an idea reviewed by the devs, I put it up on Ideascale because I know they monitor it. Same goes with GW forums. We get a lot of information about what priorities they are working on, what's next, when things are ready but it most often comes as a dev reply either here or at GW or in chat in game which means that most people aren't aware of it. I agree that GW could do a better job of keeping us informed in a more formal manner of their schedule and what they have changed due to the crowd forging process
At one time, a couple of years ago, the crowdforging process actually was "Whichever of these options gets the most votes is what we'll implement first." A couple of proposals were presented and voted on. The one I recall was "Which race shall we add first (after the core three)?" Gnomes beat halflings by a handful of votes.
Since then, crowdforging has moved back to the "conversations between players and GW" model.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Whilst there are many minor annoyances I would love to see fixed (AH UI, holes in map, tab disabled at login prompt, inability to select number of items to trade or bank ... etc etc) I personally see crowd-forging as more about major direction choices. Stuff like the details of SAD dynamic and when do we get gnomes and what will they do.
There are some in TEO that don't care about the AH or a functioning market. There are some that do. I personally think the AH needs a lot of UI fixes to be useful. I'd prioritize it pretty high.
Both TEO and Golgotha have evolved a settlement based central economy that ignores the AH. Keepers Pass is moving the same way.
This is clearly player created content arising from the failed AH system, but I am not 100% sure it is a good thing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Whilst there are many minor annoyances I would love to see fixed (AH UI, holes in map, tab disabled at login prompt, inability to select number of items to trade or bank ... etc etc) I personally see crowd-forging as more about major direction choices. Stuff like the details of SAD dynamic and when do we get gnomes and what will they do.
There are some in TEO that don't care about the AH or a functioning market. There are some that do. I personally think the AH needs a lot of UI fixes to be useful. I'd prioritize it pretty high.Both TEO and Golgotha have evolved a settlement based central economy that ignores the AH. Keepers Pass is moving the same way.
This is clearly player created content arising from the failed AH system, but I am not 100% sure it is a good thing.
I believe settlement-based centralized economies would be a bad model to spread across the game. They work fine for large and well-organized settlements. They don't work very well for smaller and/or less-organized settlements. More importantly from a high-level perspective, I believe they will make it more difficult for GW to keep tabs on inflation, relative values of various raw and refined materials, the speed and spread of inter-settlement trade, and other macro- and micro-economic variables.
GW may have committed to fixing the AH, as Daeglin pointed out. Maybe that was in the form of a comment made in a single thread. What I haven't seen is an updated, economy-focused, blog post. One that explains what GW intends to try as a fix, and approximately when they intend to try to fix it. To me, that's the side of crowdforging that seems to be slipping.
On a related topic, patch notes are great to read, but it seems like we haven't had a Coming Attractions or Big Ideas blog in a long time. Not having these kinds of blogs in December? Totally understandable. Not having them for several months? I, for one, miss them.
Edit: The "Current Year Plan", "Current Quarter Plan" and "Next Quarter Plan" levels from this post sound like exactly the kinds of blog posts that I've been missing for a while.
Since December was such a huge crunch, I'll back up a few months.
August 2014 Blog Posts
Major Announcements: Start of Early Enrollment, New Explorer package, Premium Items - Big news
More Information about Premium Items - Big news, but pretty specific information
Congratulations To The Land Rush Winners - Very specific information.
Contest Winners: I'm a Super Fan! - Very specific information.
Rise of the Supers - Specific information. A round of patch notes.
Countdown to Early Enrollment - Specific information. Another round of patch notes.
July 2014 Blog Posts
Four rounds of patch notes
June 2014 Blog Posts
One big idea post - War of Towers
Etc., etc. back to the beginning of the year.
Patch notes are great, but they don't keep us feeling engaged in the crowdforging process. The video blogs were great, but they stopped. Adventure Time with Bonny was great, but that stopped, too.
I understand that the days of "Here's how we've designed Basic Game Aspects X, Y and Z" posts are over, because GW has moved from designing the game into implementing the designs.
I understand that from September to December, the slipping Alpha-to-EE transition schedule kept most GW staff members' eyes focused squarely on the immediate future.
I'm looking for some posts like the one I linked above, and the types of posts it described, to be in the blog in addition to the progress reports. If they're only appearing in forum posts (especially if the discussion moves to the GW forum before it can handle searches), then many players will never see them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Whilst there are many minor annoyances I would love to see fixed (AH UI, holes in map, tab disabled at login prompt, inability to select number of items to trade or bank ... etc etc) I personally see crowd-forging as more about major direction choices. Stuff like the details of SAD dynamic and when do we get gnomes and what will they do.
There are some in TEO that don't care about the AH or a functioning market. There are some that do. I personally think the AH needs a lot of UI fixes to be useful. I'd prioritize it pretty high.Both TEO and Golgotha have evolved a settlement based central economy that ignores the AH. Keepers Pass is moving the same way.
This is clearly player created content arising from the failed AH system, but I am not 100% sure it is a good thing.
As a player from a settlement that does not have a 24 hour presence, this is a bad thing. It leaves a substantial player base not seeing a major issue with the economy and the movement of goods that is completely inaccessible to smaller settlements.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Both TEO and Golgotha have evolved a settlement based central economy that ignores the AH. Keepers Pass is moving the same way.
This is clearly player created content arising from the failed AH system, but I am not 100% sure it is a good thing.
Actually, I *think* our use of banker characters is a player fix to the absense of company and settlement banks, not to any shortfall in the markets or auction houses. If we had company banks where we could just drop goods into company stores and The System logged the transfer so individuals got credit for contributions to a particular company...? We wouldn't be using bankers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Part of the non-capitalistic nature of TEO's economy is due to a few people saying a functioning market is not in TEO's favour. Part of it is "we aren't responsible for establishing the market." I disagree on that point. Regardless, at this early point, we don't have enough surplus to start selling goods. It's been less than two weeks; give the market some time to emerge.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Part of the non-capitalistic nature of TEO's economy is due to a few people saying a functioning market is not in TEO's favour. Part of it is "we aren't responsible for establishing the market." I disagree on that point. Regardless, at this early point, we don't have enough surplus to start selling goods. It's been less than two weeks; give the market some time to emerge.
My worry is that the longer the AH remains difficult to use, the more people will get comfortable in a non-coin economy, and the harder it will be to bring the game back to the intended coin economy. Yes, buy orders will probably help, but I think there might be quicker-to-implement changes that could help while the buy order code is being written.
Also, it's been much longer than 2 weeks that the AHs have been broken. We saw Alpha develop into a non-coin economy already. Part of that was because the money wasn't going to last, but I think a lot of it was because spending money was such a cumbersome process. A few people got rich, then realized that their fat bankrolls couldn't actually buy anything, because the AHs were empty.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The development of a coin-based economy is inevitable, even with the current state of the AH, but is requires a surplus of goods that doesn't exist yet. Time will do the trick, but the removal of said barriers will help.
I hope you're right, but we do have the example of Alpha, where a coin/AH economy never got off the ground.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So when will the crowdforging get a more official form? As in some sort of poll, where directions can be chosen, directed by Ryan or someone else from GW?
These kind of alarmist / sky is falling threads are not helpful, and not only do you have a poor opinion/understanding of how Crowdforging works with regards to PFO, you take a few Q&As and blow them out of proportion.
I would council some patience, future research and hope that many of the responses above addresses your concerns.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My Priorities: I'll keep it at five, for brevity.
1. Streamline Company / Settlement functions - including allowing multiple officers accept invite requests. Also to have multiple settlement leaders, if the primary leader wishes, to accept invites from companies.
2. Fix Feature descriptions so that they say what they do, and do what they say.
3. Ensure there is synergy within the roles, that is defacto "dedication bonus".
4. Player Looting / War of Towers simultaneously
5. Faction System (since that is easier to implement according to Stephen and Lee.
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I totally agree with you Karlbob.
Not having an easily usable auction house system severely hamstrings solo players and/or anybody who chooses to not play in one of the popular communist/autocratic settlements.
This isn't sensationalism, it's a fact.
I know GW mentioned doing something, but that was a while back and nothing has been improved to what is a critical game feature for a game that the economy is suppose to be a big component.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I totally agree with you Karlbob.
Not having an easily usable auction house system severely hamstrings solo players and/or anybody who chooses to not play in one of the popular communist/autocratic settlements.
This isn't sensationalism, it's a fact.
I know GW mentioned doing something, but that was a while back and nothing has been improved to what is a critical game feature for a game that the economy is suppose to be a big component.
The failed AH system is probably one of the primary motivations for those people currently moving to TEO or Golgotha. It's one of the reasons we may soon be seeing a primarily two settlement game emerging.