1. It's better than what we have now.
2. Transparency - Aggregation/Summary presented to Devs cannot be PM'd it must be posted publicly and harvested by CM/Devs.
I think the idea of the reports being PM'd is to ensure they are seen by Akro and passed along. Hence I think it would be a very good idea is both were done: the reports being both PM'd to Akro, and posted publicly - provided there is no deviation between them.
As to Almodum's suggestion of the monthly report - it's a good idea, but I understand the 'Advocate" summary reports (and that's what they are supposed to be: summaries) are weekly. I volunteered (nomination is a misnomer - the volunteers must actively volunteer) for the Devoted Cleric position because I have the time, the passion to do it and I have no agendas to speak of.
If selected for the job I intend (with Akro's permission to do it) to post to his PM and a public 'copy' as it were. But whomever it is they is select, I am hopeful they will do a good job and confident they will. It will be a thankless job and require an iron breastplate as they will also be hated my many because there is no way to please all the people all the time, this very thread notwithstanding.
I think the idea of the reports being PM'd is to ensure they are seen by Akro and passed along. Hence I think it would be a very good idea is both were done: the reports being both PM'd to Akro, and posted publicly - provided there is no deviation between them.
Aye, there's the rub. With reports being PM'ed there is no transparency and no way for the community to know that what was PM'd was what was reported publicly.
I believe Mods can create a sticky-post and grant posting privileges to indivuals -- if the summary report were stickied and only the advocate could post to it, then Akro/Devs could simply follow that thread and everything would be transparent.
Aye, there's the rub. With reports being PM'ed there is no transparency and no way for the community to know that what was PM'd was what was reported publicly.
I believe Mods can create a sticky-post and grant posting privileges to indivuals -- if the summary report were stickied and only the advocate could post to it, then Akro/Devs could simply follow that thread and everything would be transparent.
I agree. I'd rather see a sticky-post to provide transparency.
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adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
edited September 2014
This is an interesting discussion, but IMO many of the posts here are way off.
I believe the Advocate system can work, provided the "right" type of people are selected. Here are the main criteria as I see them:
1) They need to really know their class. The simple fact is that players make many suggestions - some are good, but others are bad, either for the class or for the game as a whole. Without experience playing the class, the advocate cannot do any sensible filtering of player feedback or prioritize suggestions.
2) They need to be organized.
3) They need to understand that their role is not to push their own agenda but to help improving the class as a whole - even if that means giving priority to things that they are not particularly eager to see.
4) They need to have sufficient time available to do the job properly.
5) They need to maintain transparency and credibility, by sharing with the player base the summaries and reports they create for the developers.
6) They need to keep in mind the interests of different groups within their class - the casual players, the hard-core RPers, the PvPers, the Solo PvEers and so on. That is, they need to be able to understand, summarize and forward the suggestions and concerns of groups they do not belong to themselves.
Whole idea behind advocates seems like devs are giving us a candy for all the feedback we do and all what they ignored. I had wrote to Acro myself. I do hope they will pick a decent player for HRs)
Mostly I do hope that this advocates will be
1. Public in way that they are allowed.
2. They are rational and do think out of box - "i play class like this it should be like this only".
3. they still remember what it is to play on lvl 10-60 and no 100% boons open. Since 80% of players are "on their way"
4. they are not "2 button players" - so that advocated can make classes work outside of just 1 set of skills gear, only pvp or only pve.
And mostly - I do hope that cryptic listens to them.
PS was listening to interview from cryptic and they sad that they were focusing on pvp in mod 4. rofl
As to Almodum's suggestion of the monthly report - it's a good idea, but I understand the 'Advocate" summary reports (and that's what they are supposed to be: summaries) are weekly. I volunteered (nomination is a misnomer - the volunteers must actively volunteer) for the Devoted Cleric position because I have the time, the passion to do it and I have no agendas to speak of.
For all that we argue, I suspect that you're one of the people that I would actually trust to do something like this. You have useful reading comprehension, can form a sentence, are apparently reasonably honest. You also appear not to be a scheming weasel who is compensating for.. something.
So yes, while we don't see eye to eye on very much, I think you'd do a great job. Done properly, it's essentially a clerical exercise, condensing all the wibble into something useful. I'd trust you to do that far more than a massive circle jerk of PvP exploiters.
Without experience playing the class, the advocate cannot do any sensible filtering of player feedback or prioritize suggestions.
Your items 2 through 4 are spot-on. Though I may be misunderstanding your intent on item number 1...
Based on the criterial expressed by Akro on what the 'job' entails - "prioritizing" anything should't matter whatsoever. These advocates are supposed to peruse (read the actual definition of that word, folks) the pertinent threads, then compile all that into an easy-to-read bullet-formatted list that expresses *all* the feedback that was brought up, good, bad, or ugly.
Sure the Advocate might add their own thoughts on things, but I do not think "prioritizing" anything is the goal here.
I've applied for the Devoted Cleric Advocate, if selected I intend to report all of it: Solo, PvE, and PvP concerns, by yea and nay, up or down, for or against. One must remember this is primarily only a way to give the Devs feedback on how the players feel about stuff. They have the giant worldview big picture of hard data none of us will ever see - so no matter what "advice" you can give it does't matter. Prioritizing anything doesn't do anything, because (as I understand it) that is not what they are after.
I invite everyone who still follows and participates in this thread to go back and reread the specific description of what it is they want, don't read 'into' anything, read it exactly as it is written and you just may choose to reevaluate your understanding of what it (exactly) is these Advocates are supposed to do.
In short: yes, as said previously, it's a 'clerical' job. Personally, I don't mind doing it and I have the time and love for the game to do it. I also don't care if doing such gets me called derogatory names and a hate-mail magnet. I see it as a way to help the Devs *improve* the game for all of us.
Based on the criterial expressed by Akro on what the 'job' entails - "prioritizing" anything should't matter whatsoever.
Maybe "prioritizing" is not the right word, as the actual prioritizing will presumably be done by the developers or some kind of a project manager, but what I meant is that some of the issues that will be raised by the player community will be significant - they will be of concern to a large portion of the class, while others will be far less significant, maybe only slightly inconveniencing a single player.
Wouldn't you want the first type to be given a higher priority?
It makes much more sense to me to sort the issues by importance, or at the very least divide them into "major" and "minor" - that's what I meant by "prioritizing", and do do this properly, you need to be familiar with the class which was my point.
Now, I have volunteered for the DC advocate position as well, but quite honestly - although I would like to be selected, I think you would do a fine job too.
Maybe "prioritizing" is not the right word, as the actual prioritizing will presumably be done by the developers or some kind of a project manager, but what I meant is that some of the issues that will be raised by the player community will be significant - they will be of concern to a large portion of the class, while others will be far less significant, maybe only slightly inconveniencing a single player.
Wouldn't you want the first type to be given a higher priority?
It makes much more sense to me to sort the issues by importance, or at the very least divide them into "major" and "minor" - that's what I meant by "prioritizing", and do do this properly, you need to be familiar with the class which was my point.
Now, I have volunteered for the DC advocate position as well, but quite honestly - although I would like to be selected, I think you would do a fine job too.
Okay I see what you mean. Though "importance" is all relative I do get your gist. And if you are burdened with the job, you'll have my full and unbiased support in it.
I invite everyone who still follows and participates in this thread to go back and reread the specific description of what it is they want, don't read 'into' anything, read it exactly as it is written and you just may choose to reevaluate your understanding of what it (exactly) is these Advocates are supposed to do.
Yes that is what they are asking for. Human nature especially on the internet guarantees that isn't what they get as the advocates will end up leaving things out that they don't agree with even though they're not supposed to. Basic corruption of the goal, not that the goal itself is bad.
Yes that is what they are asking for. Human nature especially on the internet guarantees that isn't what they get as the advocates will end up leaving things out that they don't agree with even though they're not supposed to. Basic corruption of the goal, not that the goal itself is bad.
To further elaborate on Charononus' point: Even an honest advocate who is trying to operate objectively will most likely arbitrarily devalue or highlight certain topics as a byproduct of that Advocate's personal play experience. That is the best-case scenario, and I guarantee it won't be true for all advocates.
The worst part of this entire concept is that it was introduced by Akro/Cryptic. That tells me that Akro and his colleagues recognize that they won't/can't read all of the class feedback on the forums. It probably also reveals the fact that Akro/Cryptic recognizes that the players themselves have a much better idea about the pros and cons and inter-dependent dynamics of each class than the developers who made the tweaks to said classes in the first place.
A feedback thread about a method of collecting feedback...interesting.
Some clarification on the on class advocate position.
-These individuals will be selected based on their past actions and participation in the class feedback threads from previous modules. They will be selected by GentlemanCrush and myself.
-The advocates will hold office for 1 module. Once their time in the sun is up, we will move on to the next eligible candidate.
-These advocates will not be assisting in the design or decisions regarding the class direction. These players will function to collate and collect feedback into more readable lists to improve dev response time and better allow the feelings of the community to become apparent.
-A big part of this is separating the feedback from the "discussions" that tend to pop up in these threads. These advocates will include any and all feedback in their reports. They will not be the ones deciding what is "good" feedback and what isn't. If we find that an advocate has been purposely omitting feedback in their reports, they will be relieved of their post immediately.
TY Akro. Hopefully this does what its intended to do.
These players will function to collate and collect feedback into more readable lists to improve dev response time and better allow the feelings of the community to become apparent.
A feedback thread about a method of collecting feedback...interesting.
Some clarification on the on class advocate position.
-These individuals will be selected based on their past actions and participation in the class feedback threads from previous modules. They will be selected by GentlemanCrush and myself.
-The advocates will hold office for 1 module. Once their time in the sun is up, we will move on to the next eligible candidate.
-These advocates will not be assisting in the design or decisions regarding the class direction. These players will function to collate and collect feedback into more readable lists to improve dev response time and better allow the feelings of the community to become apparent.
-A big part of this is separating the feedback from the "discussions" that tend to pop up in these threads. These advocates will include any and all feedback in their reports. They will not be the ones deciding what is "good" feedback and what isn't. If we find that an advocate has been purposely omitting feedback in their reports, they will be relieved of their post immediately.
Hopefully that has answered some questions.
So my question would be.
Player A says "X" skill is OP and needs a nerf down to "insert suggestion"
Player B says "X" skill is UNDERpowered and needs a buff UP to "insert suggestion"
Player C says "X" skill is perfect the way it is.
How would this list help the DEV team determine the appropriate opinion? The "discussion" was weeded out, but the problem still is the same... Whats worse is you cant tell the "prevailing" view on the forums since you dont have a "tally" marker next to each suggestion. Or whats worse, is youll get that "one off" guy who always seems to think that since its balanced at 12k GS, it should stay because it works for him, eventhough its game breaking when you incoorperate more/better gear and abusive mechanics to a skill... His opinion SHOULD be voiced, but with that qualifier...
...They will not be the ones deciding what is "good" feedback and what isn't. If we find that an advocate has been purposely omitting feedback in their reports, they will be relieved of their post immediately.
Hopefully that has answered some questions.
That's all fine, but doesn't address the transparency issue.
Rather than PM'ing the summary, I thinke we would prefer to create a sticky topic that only mods and the advocate can post to, and then you and/or the devs retrieve/watch that thread.
Player A says "X" skill is OP and needs a nerf down to "insert suggestion"
Player B says "X" skill is UNDERpowered and needs a buff UP to "insert suggestion"
Player C says "X" skill is perfect the way it is.
How would this list help the DEV team determine the appropriate opinion? The "discussion" was weeded out, but the problem still is the same... Whats worse is you cant tell the "prevailing" view on the forums since you dont have a "tally" marker next to each suggestion. Or whats worse, is youll get that "one off" guy who always seems to think that since its balanced at 12k GS, it should stay because it works for him, eventhough its game breaking when you incoorperate more/better gear and abusive mechanics to a skill... His opinion SHOULD be voiced, but with that qualifier...
So how will that help?
Because there should be tally marks. The intent of this is to improve data collection.
The important element here is improving our ability to track trends and feedback without having to manually trawl through all of the threads, which can be excessively time consuming and difficult.
This is part of the "Collate and Communicate" directive for the advocate.
The most important part of this position is collecting all of the data, with counts of how many people mentioned each piece of feedback, and getting it all into a readable and usable list, which consumes a large part of the time during class changes. This time investment on the dev side actively impedes our ability to make changes, so we are reaching out to the community to try and improve that.
Probably not a question for you as such but does the forum have the capacity for 'up-voting' of posts, something which is prevalent in other game forums for tracking purposes.
Because there should be tally marks. The intent of this is to improve data collection.
The important element here is improving our ability to track trends and feedback without having to manually trawl through all of the threads, which can be excessively time consuming and difficult.
This is part of the "Collate and Communicate" directive for the advocate.
The most important part of this position is collecting all of the data, with counts of how many people mentioned each piece of feedback, and getting it all into a readable and usable list, which consumes a large part of the time during class changes. This time investment on the dev side actively impedes our ability to make changes, so we are reaching out to the community to try and improve that.
I don't see how this is going to help. Plenty of feedback was given during preview. Everyone knew that CW were going to OP, GF skills were bugged (KV) and dragon glyphs were game breaking. This was reported god knows how many times and still it made it live. The problem isn't with the feedback its with not listening to the feedback. Before you say you got too much feedback to sort through it all (really) how is it that every single pvper knew exactly what was going to happen and the people that are paid to test it had no clue. It is so frustrating having just a great dev team at developing combat and be so bad at understanding balance.
The fact that a glyph made it live that did 600 damage for every hit with NO CD is just mind boggling. Not to mention that the roar bug lasted the ENTIRE mod 3 and a bugged HR set. These were admitted to being broke and refusing to fix till mod 4. It makes it hard to defend the decisions being made...
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baylen76Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited September 2014
Balancing feedback in my opinion is too context-sensitive to be meaningfully broken down into a tally sheet. A statement that might hold true for mainstream PVP may not apply in upper-tier PVP, also the other way around and for PVE, PVP-"issues" may actually be desirable fun features and contribte to a classes' PVE-viability.
At best, advocators will be sorta invisible (and still inherently biased, subjective) data collectors; at worst, you create even more noise to sift through as most likely, whatever position an advocate dares to take on the forums will spark more/amplify existing discussions, lobbying and whines.
And really, tallying? A whine carrying the same weight as a post that several hours of testing went into? Tallying outright invites whining.
Quantity != quality.
Caring about balance == getting your feedback as unfiltered as possible. Even if it's like scraping gold out of a river at times.
A good start to get better feedback would be to split the 'Gameplay, combat and PVP discussion' into two forums for PVE and PVP separately, as they require separate balancing and people often forget to mention the angle they've coming from.
And rethink GF once again, as (PVE statement) with KV and ITF mandatory, we're just left with toothpick melee range and 1 (one) active encounter. Fun? Not really.
For you guys who don't understand, and are asking questions like "how will this help" and "how will the Devs know what to do".
Its going to help because Crush said it will help him. Thats kinda the end of that. His problem was obviously not having the time to sort through the 100+ pages the feedback threads turn into.
He wants a "Class Advocate" to compile all this data into summarized reports. (BTW Class Advocate is a terrible name for this position as it implies something completely different than its actual purpose).
EXAMPLE:
New Block Mechanic:
-Pros according to feedback thread:
-point 1
-point2
-ect
-Cons according to feedback thread:
-point 1
-point 2
-Reported Bugs:
-bug
-bug
Suggested alternatives:
-1
-2
-3
Get it?
It compiles TONS of information into one easy to read report.
that is the ONLY purpose of the advocates.
The devs donot care what their opinions are on the information they are reporting, as it should be.
You cannot balance based on "popular OPINION" because as I'm sure you've noticed, even the most vocal of people who are echoed by many sometimes have terrible ideas and don't actually understand the mechanic they are commenting on.
Have your advocates compile a list like I posted above, have them "Tally" if you want, but if you use the tallies to make any kind of decisions your previous balance mistakes WILL be compounded, as we have seen happen with each mod to date.
BUT, if you are dead set on tallies let us know this is how it is going to work ASAP so I can start making alts to spam the forums with my ideas and suggestions. (See the problem here?)
Because there should be tally marks. The intent of this is to improve data collection.
The important element here is improving our ability to track trends and feedback without having to manually trawl through all of the threads, which can be excessively time consuming and difficult.
This is part of the "Collate and Communicate" directive for the advocate.
The most important part of this position is collecting all of the data, with counts of how many people mentioned each piece of feedback, and getting it all into a readable and usable list, which consumes a large part of the time during class changes. This time investment on the dev side actively impedes our ability to make changes, so we are reaching out to the community to try and improve that.
Crush, look at the rage about the fact that you want the advocates to only collate. This is not a good idea and it will only end in rage. Get an intern from the local college and don't tell us any more other than you cancelled the program. Have the intern do the collating. This is going to end in nerd rage and tears otherwise.
Because there should be tally marks. The intent of this is to improve data collection.
The important element here is improving our ability to track trends and feedback without having to manually trawl through all of the threads, which can be excessively time consuming and difficult.
So employ someone to do it. I have bought enough Zen to pay one month's wages already. And I am quite a minor "whale" - more of an Orca rather than a Blue whale.
Also, if you are going to have tally marks for conflicting opinions on the same thing, that would only be of value if there was a rule that all feedback MUST include:
Combat logs
Character level and class
Powers slotted
gear
GS
all enchants and ranks and slots
companions, levels, gear and enchants slotted
artifacts and levels
Power
Crit
ArPen
Recovery
Defence
Deflection
etc etc etc
Because there is a huge difference between an 8k PvE player going into PvP against an 18k Guild and a 15k PvP player going into normal Dread Vault. When I first hit level 60, Dread Vault was terribly difficult. Now, it is a walk in the park; except I always get the same blue Gloried Icon.
And the biggest money income is probably from hard core PvPers, who would buy Campaign Completion boxes to get the Insta-Boons for their new characters. And they are the ones going up against other players with slightly more sophisticated AI than dungeon bosses.
But, really, by all accounts a lot of the problems with balance and not-WAI features and powers in the game seem to be because you completely ignored an enormous amount of feedback from people on the Test Servers before Mod 4 was even released.
So why do you suddenly take an interest in what people say in a forum thread? And why is it you take SO much interest, that you are not prepared to pay a junior employee, but instead want some player to do it for nothing?
Sounds a bit like a PR exercise to me.
~
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adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
Because there should be tally marks. The intent of this is to improve data collection.
The important element here is improving our ability to track trends and feedback without having to manually trawl through all of the threads, which can be excessively time consuming and difficult.
This is part of the "Collate and Communicate" directive for the advocate.
Fair enough, but there are five things that worry me slightly.
One is the very nature of the forums, where you are likely to get a lot of posts about any recent issue, no matter how small it is, but few posts about long-standing problems, even though they may be more significant to the class in question as such.
My second worry is the potential for manipulation of the tally - not by the advocates, but by groups of people with specific agendas, who might attempt to skew the numbers, for example by creating a number of forum accounts and make it look like some particular issue is of concern to a large number of people.
My third worry is deliberate trolling. There are people that are fundamentally opposed to the whole advocate idea, and some of them might resort to dirty tricks to essentially derail this.
My fourth worry has to do with transparency - will the advocates be allowed/required to share their summaries with the player community?
Finally, there is the issue of non-class-specific feedback. There are quite a few issues that are not linked to any specific class as such, but more general. I would really suggest adding one more advocate - the "non-class" one, responsible for collecting/collating feedback on issues that are not specific to any one class - to explain what I mean, consider the large number of posts about the crowds of people in the Whispering Caverns HE and the problem of people being invited into "full" instances. That is not related to any one class, and my worry is that having the advocates might result in such feedback being ignored/forgotten.
It seems also that some people might have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the advocate position, partly because of the name - if it had been called "Class X feedback collector", there would have been less room for confusion. Also, there may have been some misconceptions because of some of the questions that potential candidates were asked to answer, for example which D&D classes they like to play and in what direction they want to see the class go - it may have given the impression that that the task would involve more active "filtering".
my god ... taking a few cretins signing up for class with which only logs to find errors (which is more offensive than problematic) is not necessary to do anything special for this service.
the point is, and I insist: if a community in response to a certain problem, ask for X and Y, X and Y will be given (or arrangement) or, again, we have a new super unbalanced feet will require a series of nerfs on aspects that liked?
and all the bugs that are not fixed?
summary: this more sanitized feedback represents a change of method in response to feedback, or is it just a means to calm the community at the same instant that ignores? (can use the euphemism you want here).
Because there should be tally marks. The intent of this is to improve data collection.
The important element here is improving our ability to track trends and feedback without having to manually trawl through all of the threads, which can be excessively time consuming and difficult.
This is part of the "Collate and Communicate" directive for the advocate.
The most important part of this position is collecting all of the data, with counts of how many people mentioned each piece of feedback, and getting it all into a readable and usable list, which consumes a large part of the time during class changes. This time investment on the dev side actively impedes our ability to make changes, so we are reaching out to the community to try and improve that.
with all due respect... if the source of the data is opinion rather than fact... meaning if 20 individuals have a similar experience of going into PvP and getting slaughtered by HRs (just an example) and suggest they are too OP... considering you have a wide range of player levels due to time invested, skill, gear, builds, guild support, etc... how can you consider combining this data with actual data comparisons, combat logs, collective builds and gear comparisons, etc?
i do realize that the feedback collectively is what it is. the source is greatly varied. i just hope that is part of what is taken into consideration when reviewed.
as for transparency, it would only give those that disagree with what the masses are saying a rail to rant over. as akromatik stated, advocates will not be a part of the decision making. they are only collating and reporting data. so i suppose how the data is viewed is at PWE's sole discretion. that is how it's always been even with the official feedback threads in the preview forums.
The whole thing reminds me of cheesy horror where the camera pans out and the kicker is that the protagonist is the monster.
I have met the playerbase, hell, I am one of them. "Hive of scum and villainy" doesn't even begin to cover what we're like. I really would prefer a stronger emphasis on instrumentation and data, rather than listening to us. We are not to be trusted.
with all due respect... if the source of the data is opinion rather than fact... meaning if 20 individuals have a similar experience of going into PvP and getting slaughtered by HRs (just an example) and suggest they are too OP... considering you have a wide range of player levels due to time invested, skill, gear, builds, guild support, etc... how can you consider combining this data with actual data comparisons, combat logs, collective builds and gear comparisons, etc?
i do realize that the feedback collectively is what it is. the source is greatly varied. i just hope that is part of what is taken into consideration when reviewed.
as for transparency, it would only give those that disagree with what the masses are saying a rail to rant over. as akromatik stated, advocates will not be a part of the decision making. they are only collating and reporting data. so i suppose how the data is viewed is at PWE's sole discretion. that is how it's always been even with the official feedback threads in the preview forums.
Well some of the stuff posted by mods and dev's lately has cast question on if it's legitimate to post our logs/ACT data (which is just the logs put into a nice readable format) If we really can't post those anymore, and I don't think we've gotten an official clarification on this, then opinion is all we can post.
The whole thing reminds me of cheesy horror where the camera pans out and the kicker is that the protagonist is the monster.
I have met the playerbase, hell, I am one of them. "Hive of scum and villainy" doesn't even begin to cover what we're like. I really would prefer a stronger emphasis on instrumentation and data, rather than listening to us. We are not to be trusted.
This is pretty much the main issue. The one thing is it's not just the playerbase here. It's all humanity on the internet. A few can be trusted but 99.99999999% shouldn't be.
A feedback thread about a method of collecting feedback...interesting.
Some clarification on the on class advocate position.
-These individuals will be selected based on their past actions and participation in the class feedback threads from previous modules. They will be selected by GentlemanCrush and myself.
-The advocates will hold office for 1 module. Once their time in the sun is up, we will move on to the next eligible candidate.
-These advocates will not be assisting in the design or decisions regarding the class direction. These players will function to collate and collect feedback into more readable lists to improve dev response time and better allow the feelings of the community to become apparent.
-A big part of this is separating the feedback from the "discussions" that tend to pop up in these threads. These advocates will include any and all feedback in their reports. They will not be the ones deciding what is "good" feedback and what isn't. If we find that an advocate has been purposely omitting feedback in their reports, they will be relieved of their post immediately.
Hopefully that has answered some questions.
Thanks for clearing a few things up ,your post is very much appreciated , one more question and not asking for any specifics obviously but will people who's MAIN ACCOUNT (not forum account but main class account in game since many here use alts for the forum) have been temporarily banned in the past or had any other sanction against their account be excluded from the application process?
Comments
I think the idea of the reports being PM'd is to ensure they are seen by Akro and passed along. Hence I think it would be a very good idea is both were done: the reports being both PM'd to Akro, and posted publicly - provided there is no deviation between them.
As to Almodum's suggestion of the monthly report - it's a good idea, but I understand the 'Advocate" summary reports (and that's what they are supposed to be: summaries) are weekly. I volunteered (nomination is a misnomer - the volunteers must actively volunteer) for the Devoted Cleric position because I have the time, the passion to do it and I have no agendas to speak of.
If selected for the job I intend (with Akro's permission to do it) to post to his PM and a public 'copy' as it were. But whomever it is they is select, I am hopeful they will do a good job and confident they will. It will be a thankless job and require an iron breastplate as they will also be hated my many because there is no way to please all the people all the time, this very thread notwithstanding.
Aye, there's the rub. With reports being PM'ed there is no transparency and no way for the community to know that what was PM'd was what was reported publicly.
I believe Mods can create a sticky-post and grant posting privileges to indivuals -- if the summary report were stickied and only the advocate could post to it, then Akro/Devs could simply follow that thread and everything would be transparent.
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
I agree. I'd rather see a sticky-post to provide transparency.
I believe the Advocate system can work, provided the "right" type of people are selected. Here are the main criteria as I see them:
1) They need to really know their class. The simple fact is that players make many suggestions - some are good, but others are bad, either for the class or for the game as a whole. Without experience playing the class, the advocate cannot do any sensible filtering of player feedback or prioritize suggestions.
2) They need to be organized.
3) They need to understand that their role is not to push their own agenda but to help improving the class as a whole - even if that means giving priority to things that they are not particularly eager to see.
4) They need to have sufficient time available to do the job properly.
5) They need to maintain transparency and credibility, by sharing with the player base the summaries and reports they create for the developers.
6) They need to keep in mind the interests of different groups within their class - the casual players, the hard-core RPers, the PvPers, the Solo PvEers and so on. That is, they need to be able to understand, summarize and forward the suggestions and concerns of groups they do not belong to themselves.
Did I forget anything ?
Mostly I do hope that this advocates will be
1. Public in way that they are allowed.
2. They are rational and do think out of box - "i play class like this it should be like this only".
3. they still remember what it is to play on lvl 10-60 and no 100% boons open. Since 80% of players are "on their way"
4. they are not "2 button players" - so that advocated can make classes work outside of just 1 set of skills gear, only pvp or only pve.
And mostly - I do hope that cryptic listens to them.
PS was listening to interview from cryptic and they sad that they were focusing on pvp in mod 4. rofl
For all that we argue, I suspect that you're one of the people that I would actually trust to do something like this. You have useful reading comprehension, can form a sentence, are apparently reasonably honest. You also appear not to be a scheming weasel who is compensating for.. something.
So yes, while we don't see eye to eye on very much, I think you'd do a great job. Done properly, it's essentially a clerical exercise, condensing all the wibble into something useful. I'd trust you to do that far more than a massive circle jerk of PvP exploiters.
Your items 2 through 4 are spot-on. Though I may be misunderstanding your intent on item number 1...
Based on the criterial expressed by Akro on what the 'job' entails - "prioritizing" anything should't matter whatsoever. These advocates are supposed to peruse (read the actual definition of that word, folks) the pertinent threads, then compile all that into an easy-to-read bullet-formatted list that expresses *all* the feedback that was brought up, good, bad, or ugly.
Sure the Advocate might add their own thoughts on things, but I do not think "prioritizing" anything is the goal here.
I've applied for the Devoted Cleric Advocate, if selected I intend to report all of it: Solo, PvE, and PvP concerns, by yea and nay, up or down, for or against. One must remember this is primarily only a way to give the Devs feedback on how the players feel about stuff. They have the giant worldview big picture of hard data none of us will ever see - so no matter what "advice" you can give it does't matter. Prioritizing anything doesn't do anything, because (as I understand it) that is not what they are after.
I invite everyone who still follows and participates in this thread to go back and reread the specific description of what it is they want, don't read 'into' anything, read it exactly as it is written and you just may choose to reevaluate your understanding of what it (exactly) is these Advocates are supposed to do.
In short: yes, as said previously, it's a 'clerical' job. Personally, I don't mind doing it and I have the time and love for the game to do it. I also don't care if doing such gets me called derogatory names and a hate-mail magnet. I see it as a way to help the Devs *improve* the game for all of us.
Maybe "prioritizing" is not the right word, as the actual prioritizing will presumably be done by the developers or some kind of a project manager, but what I meant is that some of the issues that will be raised by the player community will be significant - they will be of concern to a large portion of the class, while others will be far less significant, maybe only slightly inconveniencing a single player.
Wouldn't you want the first type to be given a higher priority?
It makes much more sense to me to sort the issues by importance, or at the very least divide them into "major" and "minor" - that's what I meant by "prioritizing", and do do this properly, you need to be familiar with the class which was my point.
Now, I have volunteered for the DC advocate position as well, but quite honestly - although I would like to be selected, I think you would do a fine job too.
Okay I see what you mean. Though "importance" is all relative I do get your gist. And if you are burdened with the job, you'll have my full and unbiased support in it.
Yes that is what they are asking for. Human nature especially on the internet guarantees that isn't what they get as the advocates will end up leaving things out that they don't agree with even though they're not supposed to. Basic corruption of the goal, not that the goal itself is bad.
To further elaborate on Charononus' point: Even an honest advocate who is trying to operate objectively will most likely arbitrarily devalue or highlight certain topics as a byproduct of that Advocate's personal play experience. That is the best-case scenario, and I guarantee it won't be true for all advocates.
The worst part of this entire concept is that it was introduced by Akro/Cryptic. That tells me that Akro and his colleagues recognize that they won't/can't read all of the class feedback on the forums. It probably also reveals the fact that Akro/Cryptic recognizes that the players themselves have a much better idea about the pros and cons and inter-dependent dynamics of each class than the developers who made the tweaks to said classes in the first place.
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
A feedback thread about a method of collecting feedback...interesting.
Some clarification on the on class advocate position.
-These individuals will be selected based on their past actions and participation in the class feedback threads from previous modules. They will be selected by GentlemanCrush and myself.
-The advocates will hold office for 1 module. Once their time in the sun is up, we will move on to the next eligible candidate.
-These advocates will not be assisting in the design or decisions regarding the class direction. These players will function to collate and collect feedback into more readable lists to improve dev response time and better allow the feelings of the community to become apparent.
-A big part of this is separating the feedback from the "discussions" that tend to pop up in these threads. These advocates will include any and all feedback in their reports. They will not be the ones deciding what is "good" feedback and what isn't. If we find that an advocate has been purposely omitting feedback in their reports, they will be relieved of their post immediately.
Hopefully that has answered some questions.
These players will function to collate and collect feedback into more readable lists to improve dev response time and better allow the feelings of the community to become apparent.
Fox Stevenson - Sandblast
Oh Wonder - Without You
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- Dylan Thomas
So my question would be.
Player A says "X" skill is OP and needs a nerf down to "insert suggestion"
Player B says "X" skill is UNDERpowered and needs a buff UP to "insert suggestion"
Player C says "X" skill is perfect the way it is.
How would this list help the DEV team determine the appropriate opinion? The "discussion" was weeded out, but the problem still is the same... Whats worse is you cant tell the "prevailing" view on the forums since you dont have a "tally" marker next to each suggestion. Or whats worse, is youll get that "one off" guy who always seems to think that since its balanced at 12k GS, it should stay because it works for him, eventhough its game breaking when you incoorperate more/better gear and abusive mechanics to a skill... His opinion SHOULD be voiced, but with that qualifier...
So how will that help?
That's all fine, but doesn't address the transparency issue.
Rather than PM'ing the summary, I thinke we would prefer to create a sticky topic that only mods and the advocate can post to, and then you and/or the devs retrieve/watch that thread.
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
Because there should be tally marks. The intent of this is to improve data collection.
The important element here is improving our ability to track trends and feedback without having to manually trawl through all of the threads, which can be excessively time consuming and difficult.
This is part of the "Collate and Communicate" directive for the advocate.
The most important part of this position is collecting all of the data, with counts of how many people mentioned each piece of feedback, and getting it all into a readable and usable list, which consumes a large part of the time during class changes. This time investment on the dev side actively impedes our ability to make changes, so we are reaching out to the community to try and improve that.
Probably not a question for you as such but does the forum have the capacity for 'up-voting' of posts, something which is prevalent in other game forums for tracking purposes.
I don't see how this is going to help. Plenty of feedback was given during preview. Everyone knew that CW were going to OP, GF skills were bugged (KV) and dragon glyphs were game breaking. This was reported god knows how many times and still it made it live. The problem isn't with the feedback its with not listening to the feedback. Before you say you got too much feedback to sort through it all (really) how is it that every single pvper knew exactly what was going to happen and the people that are paid to test it had no clue. It is so frustrating having just a great dev team at developing combat and be so bad at understanding balance.
The fact that a glyph made it live that did 600 damage for every hit with NO CD is just mind boggling. Not to mention that the roar bug lasted the ENTIRE mod 3 and a bugged HR set. These were admitted to being broke and refusing to fix till mod 4. It makes it hard to defend the decisions being made...
At best, advocators will be sorta invisible (and still inherently biased, subjective) data collectors; at worst, you create even more noise to sift through as most likely, whatever position an advocate dares to take on the forums will spark more/amplify existing discussions, lobbying and whines.
And really, tallying? A whine carrying the same weight as a post that several hours of testing went into? Tallying outright invites whining.
Quantity != quality.
Caring about balance == getting your feedback as unfiltered as possible. Even if it's like scraping gold out of a river at times.
A good start to get better feedback would be to split the 'Gameplay, combat and PVP discussion' into two forums for PVE and PVP separately, as they require separate balancing and people often forget to mention the angle they've coming from.
And rethink GF once again, as (PVE statement) with KV and ITF mandatory, we're just left with toothpick melee range and 1 (one) active encounter. Fun? Not really.
For you guys who don't understand, and are asking questions like "how will this help" and "how will the Devs know what to do".
Its going to help because Crush said it will help him. Thats kinda the end of that. His problem was obviously not having the time to sort through the 100+ pages the feedback threads turn into.
He wants a "Class Advocate" to compile all this data into summarized reports. (BTW Class Advocate is a terrible name for this position as it implies something completely different than its actual purpose).
EXAMPLE:
New Block Mechanic:
-Pros according to feedback thread:
-point 1
-point2
-ect
-Cons according to feedback thread:
-point 1
-point 2
-Reported Bugs:
-bug
-bug
Suggested alternatives:
-1
-2
-3
Get it?
It compiles TONS of information into one easy to read report.
that is the ONLY purpose of the advocates.
The devs donot care what their opinions are on the information they are reporting, as it should be.
EAZY RITE?!?!
You cannot do "tally marks".
You cannot balance based on "popular OPINION" because as I'm sure you've noticed, even the most vocal of people who are echoed by many sometimes have terrible ideas and don't actually understand the mechanic they are commenting on.
Have your advocates compile a list like I posted above, have them "Tally" if you want, but if you use the tallies to make any kind of decisions your previous balance mistakes WILL be compounded, as we have seen happen with each mod to date.
BUT, if you are dead set on tallies let us know this is how it is going to work ASAP so I can start making alts to spam the forums with my ideas and suggestions. (See the problem here?)
Crush, look at the rage about the fact that you want the advocates to only collate. This is not a good idea and it will only end in rage. Get an intern from the local college and don't tell us any more other than you cancelled the program. Have the intern do the collating. This is going to end in nerd rage and tears otherwise.
So employ someone to do it. I have bought enough Zen to pay one month's wages already. And I am quite a minor "whale" - more of an Orca rather than a Blue whale.
Also, if you are going to have tally marks for conflicting opinions on the same thing, that would only be of value if there was a rule that all feedback MUST include:
Combat logs
Character level and class
Powers slotted
gear
GS
all enchants and ranks and slots
companions, levels, gear and enchants slotted
artifacts and levels
Power
Crit
ArPen
Recovery
Defence
Deflection
etc etc etc
Because there is a huge difference between an 8k PvE player going into PvP against an 18k Guild and a 15k PvP player going into normal Dread Vault. When I first hit level 60, Dread Vault was terribly difficult. Now, it is a walk in the park; except I always get the same blue Gloried Icon.
And the biggest money income is probably from hard core PvPers, who would buy Campaign Completion boxes to get the Insta-Boons for their new characters. And they are the ones going up against other players with slightly more sophisticated AI than dungeon bosses.
But, really, by all accounts a lot of the problems with balance and not-WAI features and powers in the game seem to be because you completely ignored an enormous amount of feedback from people on the Test Servers before Mod 4 was even released.
So why do you suddenly take an interest in what people say in a forum thread? And why is it you take SO much interest, that you are not prepared to pay a junior employee, but instead want some player to do it for nothing?
Sounds a bit like a PR exercise to me.
~
Fair enough, but there are five things that worry me slightly.
One is the very nature of the forums, where you are likely to get a lot of posts about any recent issue, no matter how small it is, but few posts about long-standing problems, even though they may be more significant to the class in question as such.
My second worry is the potential for manipulation of the tally - not by the advocates, but by groups of people with specific agendas, who might attempt to skew the numbers, for example by creating a number of forum accounts and make it look like some particular issue is of concern to a large number of people.
My third worry is deliberate trolling. There are people that are fundamentally opposed to the whole advocate idea, and some of them might resort to dirty tricks to essentially derail this.
My fourth worry has to do with transparency - will the advocates be allowed/required to share their summaries with the player community?
Finally, there is the issue of non-class-specific feedback. There are quite a few issues that are not linked to any specific class as such, but more general. I would really suggest adding one more advocate - the "non-class" one, responsible for collecting/collating feedback on issues that are not specific to any one class - to explain what I mean, consider the large number of posts about the crowds of people in the Whispering Caverns HE and the problem of people being invited into "full" instances. That is not related to any one class, and my worry is that having the advocates might result in such feedback being ignored/forgotten.
It seems also that some people might have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the advocate position, partly because of the name - if it had been called "Class X feedback collector", there would have been less room for confusion. Also, there may have been some misconceptions because of some of the questions that potential candidates were asked to answer, for example which D&D classes they like to play and in what direction they want to see the class go - it may have given the impression that that the task would involve more active "filtering".
the point is, and I insist: if a community in response to a certain problem, ask for X and Y, X and Y will be given (or arrangement) or, again, we have a new super unbalanced feet will require a series of nerfs on aspects that liked?
and all the bugs that are not fixed?
summary: this more sanitized feedback represents a change of method in response to feedback, or is it just a means to calm the community at the same instant that ignores? (can use the euphemism you want here).
being the second case:...
This looks like putting a time consuming job on the hands of some non-paid, unknown forumist.
You need to HIRE people for this. Just as you should have HIRED moderators. This is too much too ask from "fans".
with all due respect... if the source of the data is opinion rather than fact... meaning if 20 individuals have a similar experience of going into PvP and getting slaughtered by HRs (just an example) and suggest they are too OP... considering you have a wide range of player levels due to time invested, skill, gear, builds, guild support, etc... how can you consider combining this data with actual data comparisons, combat logs, collective builds and gear comparisons, etc?
i do realize that the feedback collectively is what it is. the source is greatly varied. i just hope that is part of what is taken into consideration when reviewed.
as for transparency, it would only give those that disagree with what the masses are saying a rail to rant over. as akromatik stated, advocates will not be a part of the decision making. they are only collating and reporting data. so i suppose how the data is viewed is at PWE's sole discretion. that is how it's always been even with the official feedback threads in the preview forums.
I have met the playerbase, hell, I am one of them. "Hive of scum and villainy" doesn't even begin to cover what we're like. I really would prefer a stronger emphasis on instrumentation and data, rather than listening to us. We are not to be trusted.
Well some of the stuff posted by mods and dev's lately has cast question on if it's legitimate to post our logs/ACT data (which is just the logs put into a nice readable format) If we really can't post those anymore, and I don't think we've gotten an official clarification on this, then opinion is all we can post.
This is pretty much the main issue. The one thing is it's not just the playerbase here. It's all humanity on the internet. A few can be trusted but 99.99999999% shouldn't be.
Thanks for clearing a few things up ,your post is very much appreciated , one more question and not asking for any specifics obviously but will people who's MAIN ACCOUNT (not forum account but main class account in game since many here use alts for the forum) have been temporarily banned in the past or had any other sanction against their account be excluded from the application process?