My main problem with this idea that it misses the point of influencing or just really, community... But also, you went from "people shouldn't be said to like something" to "all comment deemed out of merit shall be removed" which means, you pretty much don't want to have a community discussion about it, but an effectively barred discussion with the few "meritful".
A person's influence (yours, mine, or anyone's else) should not be a factor in deciding the eligibility of an idea. People should not vote for ideas based on the person posting the idea, or because they were told to vote for it by a friend or streamer, that directly undermines the purpose of the CDP. Almost all voting systems are flawed and if you want me to, I can provide examples of the failures of the voting system of your choice.
But, probably most importantly, when clicking an agree button meant anything other than just wasting a post articulating the exact same thing? Maybe Chris tells us that actually the rate of agree is the arbiter of right ideas, but probably is just a convenient option.
Pressing "Agree" on a post does not add anything to the discussion. Neither does pressing "Disagree." You are already admitting, people posting "I agree" would simply clutter the thread and would probably be removed, so why are we entertaining a button which is essentially the same thing?
So, while stating that underlying systematic changes shouldn't be affected by votes... yeah, duh... trying to remove a marginally meaningful feature or actively censor the community because you decided their opinions to be "unworthy" is... a pretty hostile idea for a company that actually lives on the concept of being popularly played.
I would probably go for the opposite way on the agree button, anyone that just agrees to the idea just click that thing instead of flooding the pages, but if you disagree with a popular idea, cite your reasons so the developers can read it as well.
Nobody is being stopped from participating. There is nothing here saying, "only people worthy of participating should participate." All that I am saying is that if people want to participate, they need to add something to the discussion.
Post ratings can be abused, but I feel that they are important. I use them myself for many reasons. In my opinion every post is insightful if it is on topic even if i don't personally agree with the content of the post. Marking a post as insightful lets the author know that it has been read and their point has been heard / considered. It also gives a small incentive for them to keep participating in the discussion especially if they get developer interaction via a rating. I think that this one rating can really help Cryptic / Chris let people know they have been heard without having to post a reply or commit to agree/disagree with the ideas presented.
LOL should be removed as an option. LOL has become the default disagree button on this forum. Replace LOL with Disagree. There is nothing wrong with a dissent choice in a CDP or even on a forum like this in general. I can disagree with you without laughing at you or your ideas. Let me disagree if I disagree, don't make me laugh at someone because I don't have another choice short of posting a reply.
Agree, Like and Awesome... Why do we need all three? I often use the AWESOME rating for people who obviously put a lot of effort into their post and response. I don't necessarily agree what they post all of the time, but that level of effort should be applauded IMO. Are both agree and like needed? I don't really know.
We really need better options as far as ratings go.
The CDP should not be about validating people's egos, it should be about the game. If the only purpose of post ratings it to act as some form of validation, then it is not helping to contribute to the discussion.
re: Nobody is being stopped from participating. There is nothing here saying, "only people worthy of participating should participate." All that I am saying is that if people want to participate, they need to add something to the discussion.
I got a pm from Chris saying exactly this. my opinion is not worthy to participate in these and he would not consider anything I said going forward because I'm a nasty troll. soo.. yeah.
Here is the conversation so as to ensure that the discussion is not misrepresented. Just like with others in the group who I have contacted or contacted me I just want to get us bedded in sooner rather than later and address concerns on both sides, then grow and evolve:
cwhitesidedev March 1 Hi Fireside,
Just wanted to let you know that I can no longer tell if and when you are trolling in the CDP. If you aren't trolling then for some reason you seem to be growing with the working group at a much lover rate of value. I really appreciate the time you take to contribute but a lot of what you was is either heavily assumption based, lacking the ability to think outside of the box or myopic. I will try to spend the time to read what you post as we move forward but please underdstand that my time is limited and therefore will be spent the most on those that are adding value.
I hope these thoughts can help in terms of bringing more value from you to the group.
Best,
Chris thefiresidecatthefiresidecat 10:56AM Chris I am not trolling. you see lesser value because it's not what you want to read. I honestly am concerned about the massive amounts of change here. you want a cheering yesman squad but that isn't what keeps the player base. people come up wiht all kinds of things but then in the implementation and what they really want or need it's another story.
I do not believe I have been engaging in any kind of ad hom. I have not been picking at you or anyone else as an individual. but I do see a lot of scary things being pointed out that seem to have no regard for the in game economy or the holistic picture.
If you see no value in a dissenting opinion that's something maybe you should evaluate in yourself. cwhitesidedev#9752cwhitesidedev 12:49PM Gosh fireside. You are so far from the reality with the CDP it is stunning. You say you are concerned how much we are working on and yet you have no idea of the best working practices, dev pipelines, team size to justify your concern. All assumptions. It is prove able that we and I have found tons of value in dissent, challenge, and discussion. Your comment about economy is also left field.
Regardless my initial message to you still stands. I have limited time and the assumptions you continue to make are not adding value for me or the team. Hopefully in time we will get past this.
Thanks
Chris
The intent here is not to cause drama but to show how serious the CDP endeavor is. Where possible we need to not work on assumptions.
Any further posts about this specific topic will be removed so we can stay on topic.
A problem with CDP itself would be that we wouldn't know the impact of our feedback - it would be nice that in the last post, you add what changes are going to be considered in full, and so on. Eg, Fabricant has suggested lotsa things, and I'm wondering how you're gonna address those concerns.
Create a timeline for progress you're achieving through CDP is my idea.
Furthermore, themes, as RJC suggested, should maybe be polled?
Hey Grom,
We do this in the CDP. They are the proposals at the end. Is the issue that CDP members post after the proposal and so it gets hidden?
Thanks
Chris
1
thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
But also, consider this, @thefabricant : Maybe, popular opinions are right.
Now, look at battle Royale. Is it a meritful type of game? Meh, the battle royale concept is based on randomized and absolutely unbalanced gameplay, but more specifically, your outcome in the match pretty much depends on what weapons do you find in the first minutes. But interestingly, the most popular battle royale games are not the ones that tweak the balance the best or the most strategic. The most profitable and beloved of them is the one that made to be the most popular.
You cannot argue why seizing a Star Wars spoiler for hundred of thousand into your game "helps the game to be better", but the thing is, that pretty mediocre type of game rakes in billions not by actually improving their game, but by creating random stylish event, costumes and creating as much revenue by popularity as it can.
And the sad reality is, while you are trying to reason that "the feels" or the "popularity" should not matter, a popular mediocre game does better than the best 10 game I ever played combined. And if the community unilaterally wants a thing and stops playing if it does not happen... well, you can reason as well as you want, with all the merit, it does not matter.
I live in South Africa. The popular vote in South Africa is the ANC and it will probably continue to be the ANC for the next 20 years, because there is an entire generation that feels that it owes its freedom to the ANC and will vote for them regardless of whether or not the party has their best interest in mind, because they feel they owe it to that party to vote for them. Does that make it the right decision to vote for them? Well, I can point to all the corruption scandals related to the party or their gross mismanagement of resources and say probably not.
Sometimes, the popular decision is right, but the popular decision should be decided by the merits of the post itself and not on the reputation of the poster or because somebody else told people to go rate a post. Sadly, neither of those things are realistically possible in any voting system except for one where the posters are complete anonymous and posts are ordered randomly, forcing people to read every single post. That has other problems attached to it as well, where short posts will get more attention than long posts as well as problems in terms of readability and to be honest, this community is so small you could tell who anonymous posters are simply by their post length and writing style. These reasons and others are why I did not propose this.
Ad populum is the logical fallacy that because something is popular, it must be right. The entire community for example may want all their gear for free handed to them tomorrow, but the developers would not do that because it would not be good for the game.
micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
edited March 2020
Feedback Overview
CDP and other Neverwinter mediums exposure
Feedback Goal
Widen the CDP participation and player awareness of various events and communications.
Feedback Functionality
It was mentioned by @kreatyve but I want to expand upon this.
Currently there several "semi mandatory" communication ways which a player will encounter without additional action, though with different likelihood:
1. Launcher news section.
2. In-game intro page, the one that was recently reworked (and indeed looks better) but IMO everyone immediately dismiss as the news there are from m16.
3. In-game mails.
4. Emails - are accounts are active emails in most cases.
There are also optional mediums in which the players needs to sign in or actively participate and be up to date:
1. Facebook 2. Twitter 3. ARC site blog posts 4. Forums 5. Reddit (not official) 6. Discord (not official)
And I probably forgot some.
Though this is an assumption it seems that many of those mediums are not centralized, they require manual post on each platform. I'm pretty sure there are advanced solutions for this, using centralized platform to cover many of those platforms, and save a lot of effort.
Second most important, the first category which doesn't require additional player action is underutilized, the news section both in game and launcher can have "less dry" calendar notifications. e.g. CDP, PvP tournament, whatever. Keeping new posts will also attract attention, people will not dismiss the in-game window if there is relevant information there.
in-game mail - this one is trickier as often the posts there are "in character" so perhaps can be skipped, but on the other hand:
Actual email newsletter with the regular opt-out option. This can be in-frequent to save both spam and work but bi-monthly, or per "content Episode" "NW summery of events for the next episode", with community stuff, in-game events, news, patch notes highlights and more, links to the official streams and youtube videos (or like the QnA and more
Bottom line - better usage of the already existing systems that the players exposed to, and if needed improving those systems to make them viable and not some "updated 3 mods ago".
Risks & Concerns
I understand the translation concerns, but I saw that many of the PWE community managers translate the news posts as it is, so all it needs is a more robust in-game update system.
But also, consider this, @thefabricant : Maybe, popular opinions are right.
Now, look at battle Royale. Is it a meritful type of game? Meh, the battle royale concept is based on randomized and absolutely unbalanced gameplay, but more specifically, your outcome in the match pretty much depends on what weapons do you find in the first minutes. But interestingly, the most popular battle royale games are not the ones that tweak the balance the best or the most strategic. The most profitable and beloved of them is the one that made to be the most popular.
You cannot argue why seizing a Star Wars spoiler for hundred of thousand into your game "helps the game to be better", but the thing is, that pretty mediocre type of game rakes in billions not by actually improving their game, but by creating random stylish event, costumes and creating as much revenue by popularity as it can.
And the sad reality is, while you are trying to reason that "the feels" or the "popularity" should not matter, a popular mediocre game does better than the best 10 game I ever played combined. And if the community unilaterally wants a thing and stops playing if it does not happen... well, you can reason as well as you want, with all the merit, it does not matter.
I live in South Africa. The popular vote in South Africa is the ANC and it will probably continue to be the ANC for the next 20 years, because there is an entire generation that feels that it owes its freedom to the ANC and will vote for them regardless of whether or not the party has their best interest in mind, because they feel they owe it to that party to vote for them. Does that make it the right decision to vote for them? Well, I can point to all the corruption scandals related to the party or their gross mismanagement of resources and say probably not.
Sometimes, the popular decision is right, but the popular decision should be decided by the merits of the post itself and not on the reputation of the poster or because somebody else told people to go rate a post. Sadly, neither of those things are realistically possible in any voting system except for one where the posters are complete anonymous and posts are ordered randomly, forcing people to read every single post. That has other problems attached to it as well, where short posts will get more attention than long posts as well as problems in terms of readability and to be honest, this community is so small you could tell who anonymous posters are simply by their post length and writing style. These reasons and others are why I did not propose this.
Ad populum is the logical fallacy that because something is popular, it must be right. The entire community for example may want all their gear for free handed to them tomorrow, but the developers would not do that because it would not be good for the game.
If your suggestion is to exclude 99,9%+ part of the community from the decisions made, politics is the worst example you can make. But also, it has not really anything to do with this thread. NWO is an entertainment product, popularity keeps the company afloat and at least most of the decisions has no true moral consequence.
Also, popular solutions finance the meritful to be developed, so excluding the popular kills the rest.
But to sidenote to your specific example, the developers should not give free gear not because the players are wrong to want them, but because the players are right to need them. Making players need an item or something have no more merit than giving them for free, but it gives popularity metrics on the hours played and the money spent, so it's a longer term popularity.
So even your "meritocratic" example is just make the game popular until the next mod rolls in. And sometimes they definitely should give free gear to help newer players to start and to streamline progress where it got clunky.
Also, you think way too much of the top3 voting and a simple agree button. I'm pretty sure that @cwhitesidedev#9752 will back me up on that not being a top3 idea does not equal to being cast aside instantaneously. Good ideas will always be considered regardless of agree clicks. Or at least I have to believe this because I will never get top3 suggestion ever, but still here posting.
2
thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
If your suggestion is to exclude 99,9%+ part of the community from the decisions made, politics is the worst example you can make.
You are the only one who keeps saying I am excluding 99.9% of the community in my suggestion, so stop putting words in my mouth. It is not difficult to comment on a thread and add to it, it only takes marginally more time than it does to rate a post. If someone cares so much about this game that they want to change the development on it, they should also be willing to devote more of their time than the 2 seconds it takes to press a button into saying why they think so.
NWO is an entertainment product, popularity keeps the company afloat and at least most of the decisions has no true moral consequence.
Also, popular solutions finance the meritful to be developed, so excluding the popular kills the rest.
But to sidenote to your specific example, the developers should not give free gear not because the players are wrong to want them, but because the players are right to need them. Making players need an item or something have no more merit than giving them for free, but it gives popularity metrics on the hours played and the money spent, so it's a longer term popularity.
So even your "meritocratic" example is just make the game popular until the next mod rolls in. And sometimes they definitely should give free gear to help newer players to start and to streamline progress where it got clunky.
Also, you think way too much of the top3 voting and a simple agree button. I'm pretty sure that @cwhitesidedev#9752 will back me up on that not being a top3 idea does not equal to being cast aside instantaneously. Good ideas will always be considered regardless of agree clicks. Or at least I have to believe this because I will never get top3 suggestion ever, but still here posting.
If NW was a Battle Royale and not an MMO it might have more players than it does right now. Does that mean that no games should exist but Battle Royales? No, it doesn't! Different games appeal to different audiences and the right move is to design a game which is good for the audience you want to appeal to. The argumentation, "but this other decision is more popular," directly ignores the fact that even if another decision is more popular, it might not be the right decision for a game to make.
Ratings systems are also poor because they promote echo chambers. Go to reddit, easy example the politics subreddit is nothing but Bernie Sanders, despite the fact that other candidates exist and right now he is not even leading at the moment in the Democratic Party (its sad that I know anything about American politics tbh, but that is off topic). I can provide other examples as well if it makes you happy, but the point is, we should have a diverse array of opinions and discussion and ratings systems promote the exact opposite of that.
But also, consider this, @thefabricant : Maybe, popular opinions are right.
... tempting... but I'm not gonna step on that land mine so here's a more tame response ...
The best reason for Cryptic not to have a vote system is because they will look really bad when they implement everything but the most "popular" thing.
But also, consider this, @thefabricant : Maybe, popular opinions are right.
Now, look at battle Royale. Is it a meritful type of game? Meh, the battle royale concept is based on randomized and absolutely unbalanced gameplay, but more specifically, your outcome in the match pretty much depends on what weapons do you find in the first minutes. But interestingly, the most popular battle royale games are not the ones that tweak the balance the best or the most strategic. The most profitable and beloved of them is the one that made to be the most popular.
You cannot argue why seizing a Star Wars spoiler for hundred of thousand into your game "helps the game to be better", but the thing is, that pretty mediocre type of game rakes in billions not by actually improving their game, but by creating random stylish event, costumes and creating as much revenue by popularity as it can.
And the sad reality is, while you are trying to reason that "the feels" or the "popularity" should not matter, a popular mediocre game does better than the best 10 game I ever played combined. And if the community unilaterally wants a thing and stops playing if it does not happen... well, you can reason as well as you want, with all the merit, it does not matter.
I live in South Africa. The popular vote in South Africa is the ANC and it will probably continue to be the ANC for the next 20 years, because there is an entire generation that feels that it owes its freedom to the ANC and will vote for them regardless of whether or not the party has their best interest in mind, because they feel they owe it to that party to vote for them. Does that make it the right decision to vote for them? Well, I can point to all the corruption scandals related to the party or their gross mismanagement of resources and say probably not.
Sometimes, the popular decision is right, but the popular decision should be decided by the merits of the post itself and not on the reputation of the poster or because somebody else told people to go rate a post. Sadly, neither of those things are realistically possible in any voting system except for one where the posters are complete anonymous and posts are ordered randomly, forcing people to read every single post. That has other problems attached to it as well, where short posts will get more attention than long posts as well as problems in terms of readability and to be honest, this community is so small you could tell who anonymous posters are simply by their post length and writing style. These reasons and others are why I did not propose this.
Ad populum is the logical fallacy that because something is popular, it must be right. The entire community for example may want all their gear for free handed to them tomorrow, but the developers would not do that because it would not be good for the game.
If your suggestion is to exclude 99,9%+ part of the community from the decisions made, politics is the worst example you can make. But also, it has not really anything to do with this thread. NWO is an entertainment product, popularity keeps the company afloat and at least most of the decisions has no true moral consequence.
Also, popular solutions finance the meritful to be developed, so excluding the popular kills the rest.
But to sidenote to your specific example, the developers should not give free gear not because the players are wrong to want them, but because the players are right to need them. Making players need an item or something have no more merit than giving them for free, but it gives popularity metrics on the hours played and the money spent, so it's a longer term popularity.
So even your "meritocratic" example is just make the game popular until the next mod rolls in. And sometimes they definitely should give free gear to help newer players to start and to streamline progress where it got clunky.
Also, you think way too much of the top3 voting and a simple agree button. I'm pretty sure that @cwhitesidedev#9752 will back me up on that not being a top3 idea does not equal to being cast aside instantaneously. Good ideas will always be considered regardless of agree clicks. Or at least I have to believe this because I will never get top3 suggestion ever, but still here posting.
Also, you think way too much of the top3 voting and a simple agree button. I'm pretty sure that @cwhitesidedev#9752 will back me up on that not being a top3 idea does not equal to being cast aside instantaneously. Good ideas will always be considered regardless of agree clicks. Or at least I have to believe this because I will never get top3 suggestion ever, but still here posting.
Absolutely. The purpose of the top3 in part is a razor with which to measure the impact of directional change in the CDP hive mind through earlier phase discussion and further drilling into any given idea. Therefore it is entirely possible to have an idea be in a proposal that was only listed in top 3's a few times (I think we have cases of this already).
If your suggestion is to exclude 99,9%+ part of the community from the decisions made, politics is the worst example you can make.
You are the only one who keeps saying I am excluding 99.9% of the community in my suggestion, so stop putting words in my mouth. It is not difficult to comment on a thread and add to it, it only takes marginally more time than it does to rate a post. If someone cares so much about this game that they want to change the development on it, they should also be willing to devote more of their time than the 2 seconds it takes to press a button into saying why they think so.
NWO is an entertainment product, popularity keeps the company afloat and at least most of the decisions has no true moral consequence.
Also, popular solutions finance the meritful to be developed, so excluding the popular kills the rest.
But to sidenote to your specific example, the developers should not give free gear not because the players are wrong to want them, but because the players are right to need them. Making players need an item or something have no more merit than giving them for free, but it gives popularity metrics on the hours played and the money spent, so it's a longer term popularity.
So even your "meritocratic" example is just make the game popular until the next mod rolls in. And sometimes they definitely should give free gear to help newer players to start and to streamline progress where it got clunky.
Also, you think way too much of the top3 voting and a simple agree button. I'm pretty sure that @cwhitesidedev#9752 will back me up on that not being a top3 idea does not equal to being cast aside instantaneously. Good ideas will always be considered regardless of agree clicks. Or at least I have to believe this because I will never get top3 suggestion ever, but still here posting.
If NW was a Battle Royale and not an MMO it might have more players than it does right now. Does that mean that no games should exist but Battle Royales? No, it doesn't! Different games appeal to different audiences and the right move is to design a game which is good for the audience you want to appeal to. The argumentation, "but this other decision is more popular," directly ignores the fact that even if another decision is more popular, it might not be the right decision for a game to make.
Ratings systems are poor because they promote echo chambers. Go to reddit, easy example the politics subreddit is nothing but Bernie Sanders, despite the fact that other candidates exist and right now he is not even leading at the moment in the Democratic Party (its sad that I know anything about American politics tbh, but that is off topic). I can provide other examples as well if it makes you happy, but the point is, we should have a diverse array of opinions and discussion and ratings systems promote the exact opposite of that.
Well, the subreddit is actually pretty representative of the majority of the specific democratic that uses it. But I really want to step aside politics.
But also, your argument invalidates your own statement. As you said, the game should appeal to the audience, which means, the community's opinion. The metric you specifically want to remove. You can state that a less popular opinion might be better, but you want to remove any popularity measure, regardless how insignificant it is, which makes everyone blind to what the community needs. You can do "good" things and lose all your source of income if you cannot balance out with popularity. And you cannot balance it if your idea is to remove it altogether. Zero popularity presentation is just turning a blind eye to the community.
As said with the battle royale, not making the better choice, but the most popular keeps the mediocre the most successful. Now, actually responsible companies do the popular things AND use the resources they got to increase the quality of the game. But you cannot try to make something "high quality" and letting the community feel cast aside.
It will take a lot to convince me and the team that direction being something that is 'voted' on by players who are not part of the CDP is valuable (even though it would be much less time consuming). If anything it could be severely detrimental to the product. All player types are already represented in the CDP membership and I look forward to even more joining who will give perspective and ideas based on their assort flavors of player type. The most valuable part of the CDP is the discussion and design. You can't be results focused without understanding the detail and vice versa (at various levels) (My opinion here I believe goes against some common business golden principles but that's how I feel).
With that said the whole point of the CDP is evolution so challenging each others opinions is key.
If your suggestion is to exclude 99,9%+ part of the community from the decisions made, politics is the worst example you can make.
You are the only one who keeps saying I am excluding 99.9% of the community in my suggestion, so stop putting words in my mouth. It is not difficult to comment on a thread and add to it, it only takes marginally more time than it does to rate a post. If someone cares so much about this game that they want to change the development on it, they should also be willing to devote more of their time than the 2 seconds it takes to press a button into saying why they think so.
NWO is an entertainment product, popularity keeps the company afloat and at least most of the decisions has no true moral consequence.
Also, popular solutions finance the meritful to be developed, so excluding the popular kills the rest.
But to sidenote to your specific example, the developers should not give free gear not because the players are wrong to want them, but because the players are right to need them. Making players need an item or something have no more merit than giving them for free, but it gives popularity metrics on the hours played and the money spent, so it's a longer term popularity.
So even your "meritocratic" example is just make the game popular until the next mod rolls in. And sometimes they definitely should give free gear to help newer players to start and to streamline progress where it got clunky.
Also, you think way too much of the top3 voting and a simple agree button. I'm pretty sure that @cwhitesidedev#9752 will back me up on that not being a top3 idea does not equal to being cast aside instantaneously. Good ideas will always be considered regardless of agree clicks. Or at least I have to believe this because I will never get top3 suggestion ever, but still here posting.
If NW was a Battle Royale and not an MMO it might have more players than it does right now. Does that mean that no games should exist but Battle Royales? No, it doesn't! Different games appeal to different audiences and the right move is to design a game which is good for the audience you want to appeal to. The argumentation, "but this other decision is more popular," directly ignores the fact that even if another decision is more popular, it might not be the right decision for a game to make.
Ratings systems are poor because they promote echo chambers. Go to reddit, easy example the politics subreddit is nothing but Bernie Sanders, despite the fact that other candidates exist and right now he is not even leading at the moment in the Democratic Party (its sad that I know anything about American politics tbh, but that is off topic). I can provide other examples as well if it makes you happy, but the point is, we should have a diverse array of opinions and discussion and ratings systems promote the exact opposite of that.
Well, the subreddit is actually pretty representative of the majority of the specific democratic that uses it. But I really want to step aside politics.
But also, your argument invalidates your own statement. As you said, the game should appeal to the audience, which means, the community's opinion. The metric you specifically want to remove. You can state that a less popular opinion might be better, but you want to remove any popularity measure, regardless how insignificant it is, which makes everyone blind to what the community needs. You can do "good" things and lose all your source of income if you cannot balance out with popularity. And you cannot balance it if your idea is to remove it altogether. Zero popularity presentation is just turning a blind eye to the community.
As said with the battle royale, not making the better choice, but the most popular keeps the mediocre the most successful. Now, actually responsible companies do the popular things AND use the resources they got to increase the quality of the game. But you cannot try to make something "high quality" and letting the community feel cast aside.
In short, you need popularity metric.
I think the 'popularity' measure is key but there are various methods outside of the CDP that represent this. I love your focus on the business. It is my personal hope that we will be pioneering in the worlds/experiences we build together moving forward and this doesn't exclude the business at all (That is a lens through which everything passes). It is unfair for me to bring up Battle Royale outside of the context in which you mentioned it but it does help to give context to the next point which is: We intend to disrupt and break ice with the CDPs as they relate to the experiences and business we build. Battle Royale in its current form and in my opinion is fast follow and very business focused (There is nothing wrong with that). I think there needs to be a balance which is what I believe you are advocating.
By pioneering we can build the waves rather than catch/ride them. Its a big risk but the path we have chosen.
Chris
Post edited by cwhitesidedev#9752 on
3
thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
Well, the subreddit is actually pretty representative of the majority of the specific democratic that uses it. But I really want to step aside politics.
But also, your argument invalidates your own statement. As you said, the game should appeal to the audience, which means, the community's opinion. The metric you specifically want to remove. You can state that a less popular opinion might be better, but you want to remove any popularity measure, regardless how insignificant it is, which makes everyone blind to what the community needs. You can do "good" things and lose all your source of income if you cannot balance out with popularity. And you cannot balance it if your idea is to remove it altogether. Zero popularity presentation is just turning a blind eye to the community.
As said with the battle royale, not making the better choice, but the most popular keeps the mediocre the most successful. Now, actually responsible companies do the popular things AND use the resources they got to increase the quality of the game. But you cannot try to make something "high quality" and letting the community feel cast aside.
In short, you need popularity metric.
This will be my last post on the subject because I feel like I have adequately presented my view and I do not want to derail the thread further, but I want to add that most voting systems do not in fact represent the opinion of the majority and all have varying downsides. Without even needing to get into voting system vulnerabilities however, the obvious vulnerability is that you are only representing the majority of the opinion of the people who read the forums. This probably does not represent the opinion of the majority of the people playing the game.
We can then add to that the fact that any opinion espoused by someone of influence is far more likely to be taken as gospel than opinions which are not. It is no longer a case of comparing an idea to an idea, it is a case of comparing the opinion of an influencer to an idea and that leads the "opinion" to trump the "idea" when otherwise the alternative idea might be the one seen as good.
Often the popular choice is not the right choice. An easy example I can give of that is the fact that Path of Exile does not have an auction house. Most players who play the game, I can tell you right now, would want to have an auction house added. The developers however, wrote an excellent article explaining why they do not want easy trade.
If your suggestion is to exclude 99,9%+ part of the community from the decisions made, politics is the worst example you can make.
You are the only one who keeps saying I am excluding 99.9% of the community in my suggestion, so stop putting words in my mouth. It is not difficult to comment on a thread and add to it, it only takes marginally more time than it does to rate a post. If someone cares so much about this game that they want to change the development on it, they should also be willing to devote more of their time than the 2 seconds it takes to press a button into saying why they think so.
NWO is an entertainment product, popularity keeps the company afloat and at least most of the decisions has no true moral consequence.
Also, popular solutions finance the meritful to be developed, so excluding the popular kills the rest.
But to sidenote to your specific example, the developers should not give free gear not because the players are wrong to want them, but because the players are right to need them. Making players need an item or something have no more merit than giving them for free, but it gives popularity metrics on the hours played and the money spent, so it's a longer term popularity.
So even your "meritocratic" example is just make the game popular until the next mod rolls in. And sometimes they definitely should give free gear to help newer players to start and to streamline progress where it got clunky.
Also, you think way too much of the top3 voting and a simple agree button. I'm pretty sure that @cwhitesidedev#9752 will back me up on that not being a top3 idea does not equal to being cast aside instantaneously. Good ideas will always be considered regardless of agree clicks. Or at least I have to believe this because I will never get top3 suggestion ever, but still here posting.
If NW was a Battle Royale and not an MMO it might have more players than it does right now. Does that mean that no games should exist but Battle Royales? No, it doesn't! Different games appeal to different audiences and the right move is to design a game which is good for the audience you want to appeal to. The argumentation, "but this other decision is more popular," directly ignores the fact that even if another decision is more popular, it might not be the right decision for a game to make.
Ratings systems are also poor because they promote echo chambers. Go to reddit, easy example the politics subreddit is nothing but Bernie Sanders, despite the fact that other candidates exist and right now he is not even leading at the moment in the Democratic Party (its sad that I know anything about American politics tbh, but that is off topic). I can provide other examples as well if it makes you happy, but the point is, we should have a diverse array of opinions and discussion and ratings systems promote the exact opposite of that.
actually he might well be. they keep saying biden won this or one that but it's not winner take all. in reality most of biden's "wins" are closer to ties. they will share the delegates pretty much equally in most instances. Bernie is currently just a little behind in delegates and his big prizes haven't been counted yet. the Spin is Biden is winning because they're terrified of Bernie. In reality though Bernie wouldn't be able to do much in the way of radical in his term of office because the house would never approve anything but he's pretty clearly more honest and less alzheimery than Biden. The swamp very much doesn't want to be drained.
One of the challenges, as you allude to, is that all these systems are not fully centralized. There is one tool for FB and Twitter, another tool for the blogs/news page (including blog itself and rotating images at the top) and the NW launcher image, the forums are separate, in-game mail is done by another team, emails are done by the publisher, and in-game intro page is done by some folks on the NW team.
For the CDP, the current method of amplifying its existence is via FB/Twitter posts, mentions during streams, and content creator collaborations. Now that we've had several great CDPs, the next step is to begin utilizing the website and the launcher rotators (which require specifically templated assets so there is extra work involved).
I would love to move forward with using email, localization, and other communication options but since those require work outside of myself (and fall under different business areas), they are more up in the air. It's also really important to us to ensure that the CDP does not become a marketing initiative - that would go against the spirit of this program.
Well, the subreddit is actually pretty representative of the majority of the specific democratic that uses it. But I really want to step aside politics.
But also, your argument invalidates your own statement. As you said, the game should appeal to the audience, which means, the community's opinion. The metric you specifically want to remove. You can state that a less popular opinion might be better, but you want to remove any popularity measure, regardless how insignificant it is, which makes everyone blind to what the community needs. You can do "good" things and lose all your source of income if you cannot balance out with popularity. And you cannot balance it if your idea is to remove it altogether. Zero popularity presentation is just turning a blind eye to the community.
As said with the battle royale, not making the better choice, but the most popular keeps the mediocre the most successful. Now, actually responsible companies do the popular things AND use the resources they got to increase the quality of the game. But you cannot try to make something "high quality" and letting the community feel cast aside.
In short, you need popularity metric.
This will be my last post on the subject because I feel like I have adequately presented my view and I do not want to derail the thread further, but I want to add that most voting systems do not in fact represent the opinion of the majority and all have varying downsides. Without even needing to get into voting system vulnerabilities however, the obvious vulnerability is that you are only representing the majority of the opinion of the people who read the forums. This probably does not represent the opinion of the majority of the people playing the game.
We can then add to that the fact that any opinion espoused by someone of influence is far more likely to be taken as gospel than opinions which are not. It is no longer a case of comparing an idea to an idea, it is a case of comparing the opinion of an influencer to an idea and that leads the "opinion" to trump the "idea" when otherwise the alternative idea might be the one seen as good.
Often the popular choice is not the right choice. An easy example I can give of that is the fact that Path of Exile does not have an auction house. Most players who play the game, I can tell you right now, would want to have an auction house added. The developers however, wrote an excellent article explaining why they do not want easy trade.
I think you entirely missing the point or just don't want to understand it:
The game should appeal to the audience, which means, the community's opinion. The metric you specifically want to remove. You can state that a less popular opinion might be better, but you want to remove any popularity measure, regardless how insignificant it is, which makes everyone blind to what the community needs. You can do "good" things and lose all your source of income if you cannot balance out with popularity.
Also, there is no "opinion" vs "idea". You have your opinion and other people have theirs. It's not math where you can objectively measure theoretical values against each other.
And alsoalso, I would like to state again that not being voted on does not equal to not being done:
Now, actually responsible companies do the popular things AND use the resources they got to increase the quality of the game.
And you can bet Path of Exile did measured the popularity of not being an auction house, this is the reason why they wrote an article explaining it. They did not just said "we no want" and just removed any post that said "I want auction house because I liked it". But you directly suggest that and you still did not explain why a not significant button that actively helps to keep the discussion dense is so bad, even though agreeing to an individual suggestion has almost zero weight.
2
micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
edited March 2020
What does the agree measures, the popularity of the idea, the popularity of the poster, or the popularity of someone who thought it is a good idea and asked others to "agree" which they do without reading?
Anyone how has been around the forums for a while knows by name (or icon) those 20'ish? people who agree, disagree, lol, and so on. I know what posts get what and by whom, there are not many surprises, some groups align in ideas, some people just lol for the spite, some will agree just because... And looking at the new comers at the former CDP I know who are most of them, and why they reacted on the posts that they did.
I'm not against agrees, or for, (though I do love my agrees, don't forget to vote, like, and subscribe), nor I'm personally saying that it is wrong or right to ask people to vote for specific post (though I believe it will be better if people encourage others to read and participate) I'm just pointing out that this entire fascinating discussion about the game popularity, effects of votes on decision making, business choices and audience confirmation is 100% not relevant to this specific case. (well not 100% not relevant, but I hope I conveyed the point here).
Such an interesting conversation. Is the product 'Popularity' metric part of a 'Confidence' psychology/metric? (I think it is. Twitch for example is a tool that can be used to boost confidence through popularity and vice versa) The confidence metric is tangible but hard to isolate and measure (Release quality impact short, medium and long term for example). Many factors play into confidence including User Experience. The CDP focuses on intent, evolution and execution (more to be done here in regard to how the CDP evolves) and therefore the 'Confidence' metric is necessary as part of the conversation in regard to how we evolve the User Experience/Business. I think we can probably try to measure this by looking at analytics at key periods of the game (recent) and then extrapolate how to utilize the data in the CDP as a lens/category and then apply that more broadly to larger pools of data like industry trends.
But no mass voting (-: We are building (CDP) a star ship not a carnival ship.
Chris
3
rickcase276Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,404Arc User
The only bad thing I can see, from the scope of the CDPs so far, is that the completely solo players' voices can not be properly heard, as the subject matters so far are not really stuff that concerns them. Yes rewards do impact them, but for the most part the rewards talked about were dungeon rewards, which excludes their playstyle. Now yes do a CDP on campaigns, questlines, lore etc then their voices can be properly heard.
The only bad thing I can see, from the scope of the CDPs so far, is that the completely solo players' voices can not be properly heard, as the subject matters so far are not really stuff that concerns them. Yes rewards do impact them, but for the most part the rewards talked about were dungeon rewards, which excludes their playstyle. Now yes do a CDP on campaigns, questlines, lore etc then their voices can be properly heard.
I agree Rick and we will. As per the road map our direction to exceed in the areas you mention are clear. As the episodes roll out, CDPs on campaigns, questlines, lore will be demanded (-: A few team members play solo or in my case did to get to Avernus etc. You can see the impact of our and CDP members experience in CDP 1 and our plans for M20. In the interim we are going to learn how to build really engaging narrative experiences in the Episodes and of course Mods as intersecting arcs that also evolve the world. It will be a journey!
1) I do not like the current recommended format for posting. It just is worded in a very clunky and not particularly clear fashion. I do like the proposed format that @thefabricant suggested in his first post here.
2) Keep the topics narrower. The rewards and progression CDP - while coming up with many great idea - was also a confusing mess to read and try to keep track of what/who/when. It was rather sad that a player had to make a spreadsheet for us to help keep track of various topics within that one CDP. That spreadsheet was great btw, thank you So please, keep the topics narrower even though that means there will be more topics to cover. As an addendum, I think three weeks is plenty of time for a CDP topic.
3) It's time to spread the word more. One of my guildies has ensured that all guild members who read our guild forums is aware of the CPD, and encourages people to participate. I doubt every guild has someone like that, or that every guild even has someone aware of the whole CDP project. I do not think that a well-written one time in game mail to all players on all platforms would be considered too obnoxious. Have it come from Lord Neverwinter, he can be "requesting ideas on what improvements to next make in Protector's Enclave" or similar and have a link to the CDP subforum.
2
micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
edited March 2020
Twitch viewers, post agrees, reddit upvotes and so on will boost confidence, or in some cases shatter it, but the question remains does this popularity metric reflect an idea? Presentation? Good timing?
There is a concept in voting (elections), voters tend to vote more against a candidate instead of for one. Twitch, in some cases, is a good example of this effect, a streamer who will have some "soap box preaching" mentality with, shouting, "rhetoric", and "fight" will get more viewers than someone who tries to create calm discussion of ideas. Pitchforks and torches create mobs - viewers. People like to unite in dislike / hate to something.
Similarly, on a CDP posting an idea will gather some agrees or not, on the other hand opposing an idea, will yield to more agreement from all those who found something objectionable in the same idea. It is always easier to disagree, or agree with disagreement than to support an idea.
So back to confidence, does it make my original idea better or worse, should I feel discouraged due to the fact that someone got more agrees. Public people will get more agrees, for worse ideas, charismatic people or people who write well in short clear way will get more, over good ideas that were written by someone who is not fluent with the language, but does that mean that the idea is better? No, it means the presentation is better, or they reach more audience.
Like in statistics, we should be very careful what our measurement actually represents and what it not.
1) I do not like the current recommended format for posting. It just is worded in a very clunky and not particularly clear fashion. I do like the proposed format that @thefabricant suggested in his first post here.
2) Keep the topics narrower. The rewards and progression CDP - while coming up with many great idea - was also a confusing mess to read and try to keep track of what/who/when. It was rather sad that a player had to make a spreadsheet for us to help keep track of various topics within that one CDP. That spreadsheet was great btw, thank you So please, keep the topics narrower even though that means there will be more topics to cover. As an addendum, I think three weeks is plenty of time for a CDP topic.
3) It's time to spread the word more. One of my guildies has ensured that all guild members who read our guild forums is aware of the CPD, and encourages people to participate. I doubt every guild has someone like that, or that every guild even has someone aware of the whole CDP project. I do not think that a well-written one time in game mail to all players on all platforms would be considered too obnoxious. Have it come from Lord Neverwinter, he can be "requesting ideas on what improvements to next make in Protector's Enclave" or similar and have a link to the CDP subforum.
Hey Tam,
Thanks for posting. Regarding:
1: We absolutely need to rework this as a group.
2: Sometimes the needs of the business/mission require a more bombastic/wider approach, unfortunately the CDP group doesn't get to see the day to day of how we analyze and disseminate the conversation until the proposal phase (outside the flow of the conversation). Moving forward we will have more time to have a more focused discussion and pipeline. This said we should always be prepared to work under constraints as a CDP (time for example).
3: I disagree. We have a group of dedicated, smart and passionate CDP members. The wider we blow the group open the longer the cycles of bedding in are and so on. I have no issue with folks joining virally but not something that could be seen as marketing where the signal to noise ratio becomes unmanageable. I think we need to look at ways that we can consume the data/opinion without incurring the above issue including technology. Twitch is interesting in this regard. (Interestingly though and I don't know if it is the same for other team members but I tend to spend more time reading posts from a new member- Regardless you end up with an economies of scale problem if you open the floodgates).
Twitch viewers, post agrees, reddit upvotes and so on will boost confidence, or in some cases shatter it, but the question remains does this popularity metric reflect an idea? Presentation? Good timing?
There is a concept in voting (elections), voters tend to vote more against a candidate instead of for one. Twitch, in some cases, is a good example of this effect, a streamer who will have some "soap box preaching" mentality with, shouting, "rhetoric", and "fight" will get more viewers than someone who tries to create calm discussion of ideas. Pitchforks and torches create mobs - viewers. People like to unite in dislike / hate to something.
Similarly, on a CDP posting an idea will gather some agrees or not, on the other hand opposing an idea, will yield to more agreement from all those who found something objectionable in the same idea. It is always easier to disagree, or agree with disagreement than to support an idea.
So back to confidence, does it make my original idea better or worse, should I feel discouraged due to the fact that someone got more agrees. Public people will get more agrees, for worse ideas, charismatic people or people who write well in short clear way will get more, over good ideas that were written by someone who is not fluent with the language, but does that mean that the idea is better? No, it means the presentation is better, or they reach more audience.
Like in statistics, we should be very careful what our measurement actually represents and what it not.
Great commentary. For me the 'Confidence' metric is more psychological/experiential/long-term than clicks per se. The quality of every part of the overall experience.
The CDP program should have started with this question: "As the new Executive Producer, what is the most pressing important information/facts/history that I should know about Neverwinter."
I understand time is short, but it would still have significantly improved the current gung-ho methodical process of the current CDP program.
Examples: Reward CDP - I didn't post in the Rewards CDP because I didn't want to ruin people's (esp. newbies') wishlists and hopes.
I would have pointed out the whole gamut of rewards and items have been significantly diminished or devalued.
When NW switched to monetizing the dungeon keys, they did a full drop table pass. They essentially populated every chests with as much items they can harness.
But after Mod 16, Practically everything have lost their value, especially the companions (lost abilities/powers/healing/taunt) and artifacts (even the event artifacts!)
Where else are they going pull from a pool of items?
Another is the weapon and armor enchantments which used to be capped. The Rank 13 (unparalleled) was nerfed to Rank 10 and they kept the numerical tag and added a "new" rank 14 ( which doesn't even amount to the old rank 11).
They took the old crammed cabinet, sawed it off and tacked on a new rank 14 shelf.
So, NW is going make a ton of new Companions, Artifacts and Armor and Weapon enchantments with already stretched resources??
PVP CDP - Waste of resources. Before NW was released, I caught an interview on Youtube. When the Devs were asked about PvP, they replied Pvp "is probably added after launch" (something to that effect). I loled because you just don't tack on PvP on an MMORPG. Either build it from the ground up or don't bother at all
I'd say NW is 95-99% PvE with at most a generous 5% PvP. Now that would be competing with other MMOs that have PvP in their DNA.
Therefore 1 NW dev for 1% population vs other MMOs with large teams focused on refining their PvP. Lose focus on 1 player or lose focus on 99 players?
Many of these things and many others would have been pointed out if there was an initial Get-to-Know NW CDP in the first place before the others.
2: Sometimes the needs of the business/mission require a more bombastic/wider approach, unfortunately the CDP group doesn't get to see the day to day of how we analyze and disseminate the conversation until the proposal phase (outside the flow of the conversation). Moving forward we will have more time to have a more focused discussion and pipeline. This said we should always be prepared to work under constraints as a CDP (time for example).
This ties into some thoughts I was having with regard to the CDP: how well (or not) our proposals are being considered, ranked, pursued, dispositioned, and the rationale behind those decisions. Just by way of example: anyone who has read my posts over the years knows how hard I have pushed for things like the reopening of dungeon side areas and reclaimability of Foundry rewards. However, it makes no sense to waste energy (and make myself a pest) if I know the idea has been considered and discarded, and the rationale behind it (or conversely, if the idea is scheduled or otherwise in-work). It would be terrific if, post-CDP for a particular topic, the devs put up a table showing the ideas that came from the CDP, their status, and a well-worded rationale behind any decisions. That would not only provide closure but also allow the community to point out any ideas that were missed or spur more brainstorming on how to potentially overcome any obstacles that came up.
On another note, I was very worried about the "choose your top three ideas" part as I saw it as an opportunity for bias to creep into the sample. If the majority of the participants were hard-core dungeon-runners, for example, I would expect ideas that had nothing to do with that to quickly fall through the cracks, or at least be at greater risk of it. To me it pits an idea being popular with a group vs. an idea that still might have merit in its own right but isn't seen as a priority to that group. At the very least, I think one must always take the possibility of selection bias into account with such a system.
This next idea might be a lot of work, just throwing it out there. Would it make sense to have someone at Cryptic type up a short "meeting minutes" type format every few days to summarize what came before? That is, something that people in the discussion can use as a roadmap so they can get quickly up to date on prior parts of the discussion. I'm not sure if the forum software supports it but something that also provided links to full posts might make such a thing more useful.
Harper Chronicles: Cap Snatchers (RELEASED) - NW-DPUTABC6X Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
A problem with CDP itself would be that we wouldn't know the impact of our feedback - it would be nice that in the last post, you add what changes are going to be considered in full, and so on. Eg, Fabricant has suggested lotsa things, and I'm wondering how you're gonna address those concerns.
Create a timeline for progress you're achieving through CDP is my idea.
Furthermore, themes, as RJC suggested, should maybe be polled?
Hey Grom,
We do this in the CDP. They are the proposals at the end. Is the issue that CDP members post after the proposal and so it gets hidden?
Thanks
Chris
Basically, having a tangible impact is what I'm going after. I don't mean something like "Person A suggested this completely impossible thing but we'll do it anyways", but basically, write down your train of thought.
So, for instance - I make an idea for let's say Boons or something else in another topic. It might be good, it might be bad - doesn't matter. But some info as to why something would or wouldn't work would be great - that way we can actually see the goal you have in mind.
Basically, instead of just writing changes that we'd like to see, and just use a dartboard to select a few that are good, give us an idea as to why something would or wouldn't work. So in the above example of boons - I say make those boons more exciting by making them relevant everywhere, you say it wouldn't work because of Power creep for instance, and then we build around that.
So instead of us just feeding you information, we have a clear picture why idea #1 wouldn't work, and we move on.
This way we could avoid the unnecessary ideas that get repeated over and over and then, instead of having 50+ pages of things that might be good, or might be horrid, we get an update - similar to preview patch notes and so on.
As an example, if we take the rewards CDP - lots of suggestions on the entirety of the good-bad spectrum. You take the top 10% of ideas - ones you like but don't know if it's possible to implement, and ones you like and are able to implement, and you write them down, eg:
Implementing a way to get chase items by making it less RNG would be good, but making it a controlled environment would mean pre-determined amount of grind, making it very same-y and boring
Progression-type items such as artifacts are a long-term investment and an AD sink, and should therefore change so it doesn't have to be replaced, so implementing an artifact system similar to pet system where you organize its abilities and powers is good, but would remove the need for upgrades
And then, we would suggest things to mitigate the issues such as for #1 - pseudo random distribution. There's still chance involved, but you're guaranteed to get an item after a few runs, depending on the rarity. As for #2 issue, give those same artifacts another factor that makes them different, but doesn't leave you bound to the artifact because of a set bonus - not necessarily anyways.
Let me know if you get what I'm trying to say - it's a bit hard to explain so any confusion is warranted.
Also, sorry for double post - I can't seem to be able to edit my previous post for some reason - but a big thing for me would be the subjects of CDP. Eg, it's a great thing that you're trying to fix subject #1, but the community things subject #2 is more relevant so we'd like that to take priority. So at the end, try to make a poll as to what subject to address next. Make a list of 3-5 things, and everyone gets to vote.
Comments
cwhitesidedev March 1
Hi Fireside,
Just wanted to let you know that I can no longer tell if and when you are trolling in the CDP. If you aren't trolling then for some reason you seem to be growing with the working group at a much lover rate of value. I really appreciate the time you take to contribute but a lot of what you was is either heavily assumption based, lacking the ability to think outside of the box or myopic. I will try to spend the time to read what you post as we move forward but please underdstand that my time is limited and therefore will be spent the most on those that are adding value.
I hope these thoughts can help in terms of bringing more value from you to the group.
Best,
Chris
thefiresidecatthefiresidecat 10:56AM
Chris I am not trolling. you see lesser value because it's not what you want to read. I honestly am concerned about the massive amounts of change here. you want a cheering yesman squad but that isn't what keeps the player base. people come up wiht all kinds of things but then in the implementation and what they really want or need it's another story.
I do not believe I have been engaging in any kind of ad hom. I have not been picking at you or anyone else as an individual. but I do see a lot of scary things being pointed out that seem to have no regard for the in game economy or the holistic picture.
If you see no value in a dissenting opinion that's something maybe you should evaluate in yourself.
cwhitesidedev#9752cwhitesidedev 12:49PM
Gosh fireside. You are so far from the reality with the CDP it is stunning. You say you are concerned how much we are working on and yet you have no idea of the best working practices, dev pipelines, team size to justify your concern. All assumptions. It is prove able that we and I have found tons of value in dissent, challenge, and discussion. Your comment about economy is also left field.
Regardless my initial message to you still stands. I have limited time and the assumptions you continue to make are not adding value for me or the team. Hopefully in time we will get past this.
Thanks
Chris
The intent here is not to cause drama but to show how serious the CDP endeavor is. Where possible we need to not work on assumptions.
Any further posts about this specific topic will be removed so we can stay on topic.
Chris
We do this in the CDP. They are the proposals at the end. Is the issue that CDP members post after the proposal and so it gets hidden?
Thanks
Chris
Sometimes, the popular decision is right, but the popular decision should be decided by the merits of the post itself and not on the reputation of the poster or because somebody else told people to go rate a post. Sadly, neither of those things are realistically possible in any voting system except for one where the posters are complete anonymous and posts are ordered randomly, forcing people to read every single post. That has other problems attached to it as well, where short posts will get more attention than long posts as well as problems in terms of readability and to be honest, this community is so small you could tell who anonymous posters are simply by their post length and writing style. These reasons and others are why I did not propose this.
Ad populum is the logical fallacy that because something is popular, it must be right. The entire community for example may want all their gear for free handed to them tomorrow, but the developers would not do that because it would not be good for the game.
Feedback Overview
CDP and other Neverwinter mediums exposureFeedback Goal
Widen the CDP participation and player awareness of various events and communications.Feedback Functionality
It was mentioned by @kreatyve but I want to expand upon this.Currently there several "semi mandatory" communication ways which a player will encounter without additional action, though with different likelihood:
1. Launcher news section.
2. In-game intro page, the one that was recently reworked (and indeed looks better) but IMO everyone immediately dismiss as the news there are from m16.
3. In-game mails.
4. Emails - are accounts are active emails in most cases.
There are also optional mediums in which the players needs to sign in or actively participate and be up to date:
1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. ARC site blog posts
4. Forums
5. Reddit (not official)
6. Discord (not official)
And I probably forgot some.
Though this is an assumption it seems that many of those mediums are not centralized, they require manual post on each platform. I'm pretty sure there are advanced solutions for this, using centralized platform to cover many of those platforms, and save a lot of effort.
Second most important, the first category which doesn't require additional player action is underutilized, the news section both in game and launcher can have "less dry" calendar notifications. e.g. CDP, PvP tournament, whatever.
Keeping new posts will also attract attention, people will not dismiss the in-game window if there is relevant information there.
in-game mail - this one is trickier as often the posts there are "in character" so perhaps can be skipped, but on the other hand:
Actual email newsletter with the regular opt-out option.
This can be in-frequent to save both spam and work but bi-monthly, or per "content Episode"
"NW summery of events for the next episode", with community stuff, in-game events, news, patch notes highlights and more, links to the official streams and youtube videos (or like the QnA and more
Bottom line - better usage of the already existing systems that the players exposed to, and if needed improving those systems to make them viable and not some "updated 3 mods ago".
Risks & Concerns
I understand the translation concerns, but I saw that many of the PWE community managers translate the news posts as it is, so all it needs is a more robust in-game update system.Phase 1: Ideas/Discussion
Phase 2: Drilling and Design
Phase 3: Top 3
Conclusion: Proposal
Thanks
Chris
Also, popular solutions finance the meritful to be developed, so excluding the popular kills the rest.
But to sidenote to your specific example, the developers should not give free gear not because the players are wrong to want them, but because the players are right to need them. Making players need an item or something have no more merit than giving them for free, but it gives popularity metrics on the hours played and the money spent, so it's a longer term popularity.
So even your "meritocratic" example is just make the game popular until the next mod rolls in. And sometimes they definitely should give free gear to help newer players to start and to streamline progress where it got clunky.
Also, you think way too much of the top3 voting and a simple agree button. I'm pretty sure that @cwhitesidedev#9752 will back me up on that not being a top3 idea does not equal to being cast aside instantaneously. Good ideas will always be considered regardless of agree clicks. Or at least I have to believe this because I will never get top3 suggestion ever, but still here posting.
Ratings systems are also poor because they promote echo chambers. Go to reddit, easy example the politics subreddit is nothing but Bernie Sanders, despite the fact that other candidates exist and right now he is not even leading at the moment in the Democratic Party (its sad that I know anything about American politics tbh, but that is off topic). I can provide other examples as well if it makes you happy, but the point is, we should have a diverse array of opinions and discussion and ratings systems promote the exact opposite of that.
The best reason for Cryptic not to have a vote system is because they will look really bad when they implement everything but the most "popular" thing.
Absolutely. The purpose of the top3 in part is a razor with which to measure the impact of directional change in the CDP hive mind through earlier phase discussion and further drilling into any given idea. Therefore it is entirely possible to have an idea be in a proposal that was only listed in top 3's a few times (I think we have cases of this already).
Chris
Let's continue to discuss CDP philosophy and assumptions with equal verve as to putting specific ideas forward.
Chris
But also, your argument invalidates your own statement. As you said, the game should appeal to the audience, which means, the community's opinion. The metric you specifically want to remove. You can state that a less popular opinion might be better, but you want to remove any popularity measure, regardless how insignificant it is, which makes everyone blind to what the community needs. You can do "good" things and lose all your source of income if you cannot balance out with popularity. And you cannot balance it if your idea is to remove it altogether. Zero popularity presentation is just turning a blind eye to the community.
As said with the battle royale, not making the better choice, but the most popular keeps the mediocre the most successful. Now, actually responsible companies do the popular things AND use the resources they got to increase the quality of the game. But you cannot try to make something "high quality" and letting the community feel cast aside.
In short, you need popularity metric.
It will take a lot to convince me and the team that direction being something that is 'voted' on by players who are not part of the CDP is valuable (even though it would be much less time consuming). If anything it could be severely detrimental to the product. All player types are already represented in the CDP membership and I look forward to even more joining who will give perspective and ideas based on their assort flavors of player type. The most valuable part of the CDP is the discussion and design. You can't be results focused without understanding the detail and vice versa (at various levels) (My opinion here I believe goes against some common business golden principles but that's how I feel).
With that said the whole point of the CDP is evolution so challenging each others opinions is key.
Chris
By pioneering we can build the waves rather than catch/ride them. Its a big risk but the path we have chosen.
Chris
We can then add to that the fact that any opinion espoused by someone of influence is far more likely to be taken as gospel than opinions which are not. It is no longer a case of comparing an idea to an idea, it is a case of comparing the opinion of an influencer to an idea and that leads the "opinion" to trump the "idea" when otherwise the alternative idea might be the one seen as good.
Often the popular choice is not the right choice. An easy example I can give of that is the fact that Path of Exile does not have an auction house. Most players who play the game, I can tell you right now, would want to have an auction house added. The developers however, wrote an excellent article explaining why they do not want easy trade.
actually he might well be. they keep saying biden won this or one that but it's not winner take all. in reality most of biden's "wins" are closer to ties. they will share the delegates pretty much equally in most instances. Bernie is currently just a little behind in delegates and his big prizes haven't been counted yet. the Spin is Biden is winning because they're terrified of Bernie. In reality though Bernie wouldn't be able to do much in the way of radical in his term of office because the house would never approve anything but he's pretty clearly more honest and less alzheimery than Biden. The swamp very much doesn't want to be drained.
For the CDP, the current method of amplifying its existence is via FB/Twitter posts, mentions during streams, and content creator collaborations. Now that we've had several great CDPs, the next step is to begin utilizing the website and the launcher rotators (which require specifically templated assets so there is extra work involved).
I would love to move forward with using email, localization, and other communication options but since those require work outside of myself (and fall under different business areas), they are more up in the air. It's also really important to us to ensure that the CDP does not become a marketing initiative - that would go against the spirit of this program.
The game should appeal to the audience, which means, the community's opinion. The metric you specifically want to remove. You can state that a less popular opinion might be better, but you want to remove any popularity measure, regardless how insignificant it is, which makes everyone blind to what the community needs. You can do "good" things and lose all your source of income if you cannot balance out with popularity.
Also, there is no "opinion" vs "idea". You have your opinion and other people have theirs. It's not math where you can objectively measure theoretical values against each other.
And alsoalso, I would like to state again that not being voted on does not equal to not being done:
Now, actually responsible companies do the popular things AND use the resources they got to increase the quality of the game.
And you can bet Path of Exile did measured the popularity of not being an auction house, this is the reason why they wrote an article explaining it. They did not just said "we no want" and just removed any post that said "I want auction house because I liked it". But you directly suggest that and you still did not explain why a not significant button that actively helps to keep the discussion dense is so bad, even though agreeing to an individual suggestion has almost zero weight.
Anyone how has been around the forums for a while knows by name (or icon) those 20'ish? people who agree, disagree, lol, and so on. I know what posts get what and by whom, there are not many surprises, some groups align in ideas, some people just lol for the spite, some will agree just because...
And looking at the new comers at the former CDP I know who are most of them, and why they reacted on the posts that they did.
I'm not against agrees, or for, (though I do love my agrees, don't forget to vote, like, and subscribe), nor I'm personally saying that it is wrong or right to ask people to vote for specific post (though I believe it will be better if people encourage others to read and participate)
I'm just pointing out that this entire fascinating discussion about the game popularity, effects of votes on decision making, business choices and audience confirmation is 100% not relevant to this specific case. (well not 100% not relevant, but I hope I conveyed the point here).
But no mass voting (-: We are building (CDP) a star ship not a carnival ship.
Chris
Chris
1) I do not like the current recommended format for posting. It just is worded in a very clunky and not particularly clear fashion. I do like the proposed format that @thefabricant suggested in his first post here.
2) Keep the topics narrower. The rewards and progression CDP - while coming up with many great idea - was also a confusing mess to read and try to keep track of what/who/when. It was rather sad that a player had to make a spreadsheet for us to help keep track of various topics within that one CDP. That spreadsheet was great btw, thank you
3) It's time to spread the word more. One of my guildies has ensured that all guild members who read our guild forums is aware of the CPD, and encourages people to participate. I doubt every guild has someone like that, or that every guild even has someone aware of the whole CDP project. I do not think that a well-written one time in game mail to all players on all platforms would be considered too obnoxious. Have it come from Lord Neverwinter, he can be "requesting ideas on what improvements to next make in Protector's Enclave" or similar and have a link to the CDP subforum.
There is a concept in voting (elections), voters tend to vote more against a candidate instead of for one. Twitch, in some cases, is a good example of this effect, a streamer who will have some "soap box preaching" mentality with, shouting, "rhetoric", and "fight" will get more viewers than someone who tries to create calm discussion of ideas. Pitchforks and torches create mobs - viewers. People like to unite in dislike / hate to something.
Similarly, on a CDP posting an idea will gather some agrees or not, on the other hand opposing an idea, will yield to more agreement from all those who found something objectionable in the same idea. It is always easier to disagree, or agree with disagreement than to support an idea.
So back to confidence, does it make my original idea better or worse, should I feel discouraged due to the fact that someone got more agrees. Public people will get more agrees, for worse ideas, charismatic people or people who write well in short clear way will get more, over good ideas that were written by someone who is not fluent with the language, but does that mean that the idea is better? No, it means the presentation is better, or they reach more audience.
Like in statistics, we should be very careful what our measurement actually represents and what it not.
Thanks for posting. Regarding:
1: We absolutely need to rework this as a group.
2: Sometimes the needs of the business/mission require a more bombastic/wider approach, unfortunately the CDP group doesn't get to see the day to day of how we analyze and disseminate the conversation until the proposal phase (outside the flow of the conversation). Moving forward we will have more time to have a more focused discussion and pipeline. This said we should always be prepared to work under constraints as a CDP (time for example).
3: I disagree. We have a group of dedicated, smart and passionate CDP members. The wider we blow the group open the longer the cycles of bedding in are and so on. I have no issue with folks joining virally but not something that could be seen as marketing where the signal to noise ratio becomes unmanageable. I think we need to look at ways that we can consume the data/opinion without incurring the above issue including technology. Twitch is interesting in this regard. (Interestingly though and I don't know if it is the same for other team members but I tend to spend more time reading posts from a new member- Regardless you end up with an economies of scale problem if you open the floodgates).
Great feedback.
Chris
Chris
"As the new Executive Producer, what is the most pressing important information/facts/history that I should know about Neverwinter."
I understand time is short, but it would still have significantly improved the current gung-ho methodical process of the current CDP program.
Examples:
Reward CDP - I didn't post in the Rewards CDP because I didn't want to ruin people's (esp. newbies') wishlists and hopes.
I would have pointed out the whole gamut of rewards and items have been significantly diminished or devalued.
When NW switched to monetizing the dungeon keys, they did a full drop table pass. They essentially populated every chests with as much items they can harness.
But after Mod 16, Practically everything have lost their value, especially the companions (lost abilities/powers/healing/taunt) and artifacts (even the event artifacts!)
Where else are they going pull from a pool of items?
Another is the weapon and armor enchantments which used to be capped. The Rank 13 (unparalleled) was nerfed to Rank 10 and they kept the numerical tag and added a "new" rank 14 ( which doesn't even amount to the old rank 11).
They took the old crammed cabinet, sawed it off and tacked on a new rank 14 shelf.
So, NW is going make a ton of new Companions, Artifacts and Armor and Weapon enchantments with already stretched resources??
PVP CDP - Waste of resources. Before NW was released, I caught an interview on Youtube. When the Devs were asked about PvP, they replied Pvp "is probably added after launch" (something to that effect). I loled because you just don't tack on PvP on an MMORPG. Either build it from the ground up or don't bother at all
I'd say NW is 95-99% PvE with at most a generous 5% PvP. Now that would be competing with other MMOs that have PvP in their DNA.
Therefore 1 NW dev for 1% population vs other MMOs with large teams focused on refining their PvP. Lose focus on 1 player or lose focus on 99 players?
Many of these things and many others would have been pointed out if there was an initial Get-to-Know NW CDP in the first place before the others.
On another note, I was very worried about the "choose your top three ideas" part as I saw it as an opportunity for bias to creep into the sample. If the majority of the participants were hard-core dungeon-runners, for example, I would expect ideas that had nothing to do with that to quickly fall through the cracks, or at least be at greater risk of it. To me it pits an idea being popular with a group vs. an idea that still might have merit in its own right but isn't seen as a priority to that group. At the very least, I think one must always take the possibility of selection bias into account with such a system.
This next idea might be a lot of work, just throwing it out there. Would it make sense to have someone at Cryptic type up a short "meeting minutes" type format every few days to summarize what came before? That is, something that people in the discussion can use as a roadmap so they can get quickly up to date on prior parts of the discussion. I'm not sure if the forum software supports it but something that also provided links to full posts might make such a thing more useful.
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
So, for instance - I make an idea for let's say Boons or something else in another topic. It might be good, it might be bad - doesn't matter. But some info as to why something would or wouldn't work would be great - that way we can actually see the goal you have in mind.
Basically, instead of just writing changes that we'd like to see, and just use a dartboard to select a few that are good, give us an idea as to why something would or wouldn't work.
So in the above example of boons - I say make those boons more exciting by making them relevant everywhere, you say it wouldn't work because of Power creep for instance, and then we build around that.
So instead of us just feeding you information, we have a clear picture why idea #1 wouldn't work, and we move on.
This way we could avoid the unnecessary ideas that get repeated over and over and then, instead of having 50+ pages of things that might be good, or might be horrid, we get an update - similar to preview patch notes and so on.
As an example, if we take the rewards CDP - lots of suggestions on the entirety of the good-bad spectrum.
You take the top 10% of ideas - ones you like but don't know if it's possible to implement, and ones you like and are able to implement, and you write them down, eg:
- Implementing a way to get chase items by making it less RNG would be good, but making it a controlled environment would mean pre-determined amount of grind, making it very same-y and boring
- Progression-type items such as artifacts are a long-term investment and an AD sink, and should therefore change so it doesn't have to be replaced, so implementing an artifact system similar to pet system where you organize its abilities and powers is good, but would remove the need for upgrades
And then, we would suggest things to mitigate the issues such as for #1 - pseudo random distribution. There's still chance involved, but you're guaranteed to get an item after a few runs, depending on the rarity.As for #2 issue, give those same artifacts another factor that makes them different, but doesn't leave you bound to the artifact because of a set bonus - not necessarily anyways.
Let me know if you get what I'm trying to say - it's a bit hard to explain so any confusion is warranted.
Cheers, and have a good one.
Dori.
Eg, it's a great thing that you're trying to fix subject #1, but the community things subject #2 is more relevant so we'd like that to take priority.
So at the end, try to make a poll as to what subject to address next. Make a list of 3-5 things, and everyone gets to vote.