Feedback thread for the idea of class Advocates

hfgtfsdfs · August 2014

Creating this thread where we can discuss the whole idea of class Advocates.

From one of the threads:
"We want to hear what you have to say about your class!

If chosen as a class advocate, you'll be responsible for compiling the feedback of your fellow players about your class. Each week, you'll submit feedback in the form of a bullet-point list to me via forum PM. I'll then take that list (and the lists from the other classes) and forward them to our devs."

My thoughts:
It sounds like a good idea on paper but I've seen players ideas, thoughts and how they see things and I get kinda scared that someone with really bad opinions would get this position.

How exactly would/should it work? How does someone gather ideas and opinions from other players? Whats stops a Advocate to use this position to just feed the devs with their own ideas?

Hunter Ranger Class Advocate - Nomination Thread
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?746251-Hunter-Ranger-Class-Advocate-Nomination-Thread

Control Wizard Class Advocate - Nomination Thread
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?746241-Control-Wizard-Class-Advocate-Nomination-Thread

Trickster Rogue Class Advocate - Nomination Thread
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?746231-Trickster-Rogue-Class-Advocate-Nomination-Thread

Devoted Cleric Class Advocate - Nomination Thread
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?746221-Devoted-Cleric-Class-Advocate-Nomination-Thread

Scourge Warlock Class Advocate - Nomination Thread
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?746211-Scourge-Warlock-Class-Advocate-Nomination-Thread

Guardian Fighter Class Advocate - Nomination Thread
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?746191-Guardian-Fighter-Class-Advocate-Nomination-Thread

Great Weapon Fighter Class Advocate - Nomination Thread
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?746201-Great-Weapon-Fighter-Class-Advocate-Nomination-Thread

melodywhr · August 2014

in my opinion, there are already class advocates and they are employed by PWE. there will always be opposing ideas here on the forums and among players. i doubt that this is something they would consider on that basis alone. and that's not even going into what percentage of players actually choose to visit or participate on the forums.

charononus · August 2014

This thread is a good idea. As such I'm going to quote myself from another thread here to consolidate it.

charononus wrote: »

Interesting. My only worry about this program is that you may get people that lie about playing that class to try to get it nerfed. (This goes for all classes not just SW, I'm just only posting in this one though.) Are you going to be doing any, for the lack of a better term background checks to make sure the advocates are indeed playing the class they claim? I'm just kind of an untrusting person so that's my first thought on this program.

angrysprite wrote: »

It's supposed to be a gather and report job, not for direct feedback.

charononus wrote: »

And I think part of it is supposed to be pulling out real feedback from the noise. It would be very easy to have an agenda if this was the case and leave some reasonable feedback in with the noise.

edit*

I don't have the answers to my concerns with this, and overall I like the idea of advocates, player councils, etc. I just have seen the preview threads and there was enough bad information, subversion to try to get nerfs, and mischief there to make me very nervous about this in this community without some kind of system to try to prevent it.

ghoulz66 · August 2014

Don't see the point of this when there are plenty of dedecated testers for the preview shard that don't hesitate to perform every sort of experimenting possible. 1 Person alone can cause some biased issues.

chaoscourtesan · August 2014

Completely opposed to this idea am I, for reasons of my own. That is never going to change. That's all the feedback I have on it.

hfgtfsdfs · August 2014

I would also like to have some way to actually see what is being sent to the devs about our own classes.

justsyndra · August 2014

What is sent in the PM needs to be posted publicly, otherwise said person can screw and change facts as they see fit. What if a PVE person is selected? They won't be paying much attention to PVP posts, whole side of a class is unheard from.

Way too much power for one person whose not under any official contract.

sockmunkey · August 2014

chaoscourtesan wrote: »

Completely opposed to this idea am I, for reasons of my own. That is never going to change. That's all the feedback I have on it.

I'm with you on this one. All to often, such positions only become platforms for people to push individual agendas. Or simply just lead to a level of favoritism.

I'm honestly already cringing at some of the names applying for these positions.

zacazu · August 2014

déjà-vu...

but, m2 / m3 / m4 all suggestions made to gwf in particular were totally ignored (Feedback preview thread). now will be diferent because...

anyway is a big step. but I'm a little skeptical.

valencay · August 2014

Making a public post about the report rather than sending a PM is something that should really be considered

charononus · August 2014

I just want to quote a post from the TR version that highlights the problem this community is going to have with this concept.

dersidius wrote: »

On the same token, TR's PvE damage is Laughable at best, It should exist as the main boss DPS In my opininion

Here's the problem with that. There are what I would consider 3 other strikers. HR, SW, and Destroyer GWF's. When people that apply promote that one class should be THE damage class, only bad things will happen to the game if they're listened to.

pandora1x · August 2014

charononus wrote: »

Here's the problem with that. There are what I would consider 3 other strikers. HR, SW, and Destroyer GWF's. When people that apply promote that one class should be THE damage class, only bad things will happen to the game if they're listened to.

Not all strikers are the same. Some specialize here, some specialize there.

TR should be able to melt SINGLE TARGET tough NPC's (Big ones or Bosses) with massive damage. Leave the AOE DPS and trash clearing to the rest.

meldan3n · August 2014

I see sooo many problems with this...

melodywhr wrote: »

in my opinion, there are already class advocates and they are employed by PWE. there will always be opposing ideas here on the forums and among players. i doubt that this is something they would consider on that basis alone. and that's not even going into what percentage of players actually choose to visit or participate on the forums.

This.

But if you really want to pull it off, make sure that the chosen class advocate

- has spent at least somewhere around 1000$ on ZEN.
- has never been suspended before.
- has best-in-slot gear.
- is somewhat an academic. Giving an objective, unbiased report based on one's in-game experience is not an easy task. I can imagine that many players will nominate themselves with the idea of finally getting their subjective views (again, melody's post) through to the devs.

Are the dev-induced imbalances in game big? Yes. But I'm afraid having an "advocate" might make things even worse.

Suggestion: Create feedback threads for each class that you can apply for if you meet certain criteria. For example, for CW forums, you'd have to have a CW with at least 60/80/100 days /played time + all Campaigns 100%.

naicalus · August 2014

My suggestion, if you're passionate about a class, and think this could go horribly wrong - Why not throw in yourself? If you fear someone might have biases, then why not put in yourself if you know you can be impartial?

I put in for TR Advocate because I know that there are ideas I cringe at, but that might well be good in the end - Those ideas need to be passed along too. I can trust myself to relay ideas that I don't personally like, so I put in for it. *shrug*

crazymikee · August 2014

meldan3n wrote: »

I see sooo many problems with this...

This.

But if you really want to pull it off, make sure that the chosen class advocate

- has spent at least somewhere around 1000$ on ZEN.
- has never been suspended before.
- has best-in-slot gear.
- is somewhat an academic. Giving an objective, unbiased report based on one's in-game experience is not an easy task. I can imagine that many players will nominate themselves with the idea of finally getting their subjective views (again, melody's post) through to the devs.

thats pretty much saying whoever has spent the most money lol

refracted0dawn · August 2014

I don't think this is a good idea.

Basically, I think it's Akromatik's attempt to organise and collate the maelstrom of information exploding in all the threads about class balance etc, and then send a set of bullet points of hopefully valid and balanced feedback to the developers.

But I don't think it will work.

GWFs - supposed to be melee class, stop them doing damage and stunning from 30 feet away
GFs - some nice changes recently, need to test some more.
HR - do what? Immune to damage while healing to full hp? AND Stuns? AND melee? AND Stealth?
DCs - hey! Clerics in AD&D have always been second damage dealers only to Warriors, and they can't even heal themselves!
TRs - abolish Perma-Stealth but give them their base damage and high Criticals back
CW - stun, freeze, float, choke, dead!
SW - I like it, but it does not seem as powerful as it was at lower levels, but still need to test it more.

And in between you'll get a load of "GWFs need more damage!", "TRs need more Stealth!", "CWs need more AoE damage!"

If the developers need to know what to do with Neverwinter, I would suggest they start with the PHB for AD&D First, 2nd, 3.5 and 4th Edition.

Just the Class sections. That should give them some background as to what they should be doing.

GWFs - 1d12 HD, Scale, AC +4, very high damage (2d10), 2-handed weapon, no shield, melee class, quite fast movement, no ranged attacks, no spell like abilities, standard crits.

GFs - 1d10 HD, Full Plate and Shield, AC +10, quite high damage (1d12), sword and shield, melee class, slow movement, very high defence, no missiles, no spell-like abilities, standard crits.

HR - 1d10 HD, Studded leather, AC +3, high damage (1d8), bow or long and short sword, ranged and melee, some stealth, some dodge, some deflection, limited magick and spell-like effects, standard crits, no Stun.

DCs - 1d8 HD, Chain mail, AC +5, medium damage (1d6), low crits, powerful magick, high healing, buffs and debuffs

TRs - 1d6 HD, leather, AC +2, medium damage (1d6), high Crits, good stealth, good dodge, good deflection, no magick or spell-like effects

CW - 1d4 HD, no armour or shield, low damage (1d4), very powerful magick, high control powers, not so high spell damage except in a few cases, otherwise it's an Elemental Invoker type of Battle Mage.

SW - ?? don't know so much about this, but it seems to be like a Necromancer, which is a type of Wizard, so should have no armour but do much higher spell damage as they have no control powers?

Then the Feats could be more balanced. It's daft giving certain classes much higher damage and then a bunch of feats to massively multiply that damage, when other classes have low damage and Feats that boost their paltry damage by a miniscule amount.

I don't even understand why we all have the same hp, or why the different types of armour give the same AC.

And why does a DC have 28,000 hp and a GF 40,000? Why not 280 and 400? And scale the damage of the Powers accordingly?

~

oicidraz · August 2014

I think this can work very good, but they need to put some requirements like:

Class Advocates should:
- Have 2 or more characters with different classes (lvl 60) and at least be 15K on each one.
- Know how to use ACT.
- At least have 6 months playing on Neverwinter.
- Be active on forum and on the game.

Also, they should check how many time the person played on their characters, if he got all the boons, how much PvP mathces have they done, etc...

Don't be so negative, they are at least trying, and I think that if they get experienced ppl with not just 1 point of view they can make a good balance.

zacazu · August 2014

charononus wrote: »

I just want to quote a post from the TR version that highlights the problem this community is going to have with this concept.

Here's the problem with that. There are what I would consider 3 other strikers. HR, SW, and Destroyer GWF's. When people that apply promote that one class should be THE damage class, only bad things will happen to the game if they're listened to.

Part of gwf, what one sees in feedbacks threads are people who wanted the class to be the "king of aoe". the rogue wants to be the king of the single.

're on the same vibe ... the hr could have a good single / aoe.

solved the discussion.. since m2 preview ...

pointsman · August 2014

charononus wrote: »

I just want to quote a post from the TR version that highlights the problem this community is going to have with this concept.

Here's the problem with that. There are what I would consider 3 other strikers. HR, SW, and Destroyer GWF's. When people that apply promote that one class should be THE damage class, only bad things will happen to the game if they're listened to.

not to mention the character of the person nominating himself to be the class advocate

pointsman · August 2014

and this is a terrible idea to create a "class advocate" from the forum population, which as we all know is heavily overrepresented by PVPers. it won't be a "class advocate" position, it will be a "class PVP advocate" position.

if they really want to make a "class advocate" then nominations should come from the entirety of the game's population, via email or some such method.

zacazu · August 2014

magenubbie wrote: »

Except that I don't see the need for a TR to be king of Single target DPS. We're not really needed there to be honest. I mean, I"ll take it, that's my role as striker. But I would wish they'd put our superior mobility to better use or give us more tricks and turn us into a semi controller. Not CW style of course, and definitely in smaller area's, but I'd love to see more trickster in the rogue. Damage isn't everything. I don't have an ego when it comes to that. I just want a fun and useful character to play with. The TR is already fun. Now to see how we can make it more useful.

looks fun. you can adjust it in the rogue trees. decide with your community.

look instigator discription:

"The Instigator combines cunning and strength to harnesses the ferocity of battle into precision attacks and tatical maneuvers."

I would love to play with this gwf ... whatever it is.

zshikara · August 2014

This is not something that I would do personally. I don't inherantly see it as a bad idea though, but only if the devs realize that some people are just trolls and/or bad people and know a bad idea when they see it recommended by these people. I love this game and I don't want to see it ruined by a couple of people.

ambisinisterr · August 2014

There is a reason why the president has a cabinet.

The devs do read the forums, but there is a lot of noise. Smaller groups with more direct communications have immeasurable benefits to the games they have been incorporated to. In fact I am surprised to hear so much naysaying because many MMOs use these types of systems as an additional means to collect feedback.

Right now there are currently five non-employed advocates. Their names are Ambisinisterr, Zebular, Melodywhr and Lewstelemon along with a community member who has worked tirelessly to compile bug reports.

Class advocates will more or less expand this list out to get a wider range of views and opinions. But even then, class advocates will only have a more direct line. Their opinions will be no better than anybody else's.
When I don't like something I can not simply say that...well I can but it doesn't mean much. There has to be a reference for community opinions for it to have any weight.

And let me put this bold and clear to read:
Class Advocates are not replacing the forums. They are a means to give a more direct line of communication and discussion in addition to the forums.

To go back to my opening statement, the president can not listen to everybody. It is just not possible. So the president builds a smaller cabinet of people which can help express the concerns of the people with a more direct line of communication. Big companies such as the one I work for do the same thing with Safety Comities and Round Tables where upper management is able to have an open and direct line of communication with a smaller group which is just not possible with a large group.

Class Advocates are a communication tool and frankly the best thing to happen for the community and the future of the game in a long time.

stah01 · August 2014

I'm fairly skeptical also. Alot of us watched a ton of good feedback and ideas in the HR preview forums get ignored. During the last 3 almost 4 weeks till ToD Release we never heard a peep from a Dev. Just changes happening with no explanation. So exactly what is the advocate/adviser actually going to contribute more than what those threads do.

I think the mods are way heavy handed on removing threads but typically they already cut out alot of chatter that doesnt need to be in a post. And than if the person is too pve or too pvp you will have people saying that the advocate is biased. Or if he/she isnt on the top pages of the leaderboard how in the world can they know what pvp'ers want in the game. I smell disaster.

Good idea in some games but I haven't seen many people on these forums capable of doing the job.

pointsman · August 2014

Ambisinisterr, I appreciate what you and all of the rest of the volunteer mods do for this site and for the game, and I appreciate your contribution to this discussion. However, there is a flaw in your argument:

ambisinisterr wrote: »

Their [the advocates'] opinions will be no better than anybody else's.

That just won't be the case. It is naive wishful thinking at best. The advocates will of course have opinions that are much more strongly weighted than that of everyone else, because they will *actually communicate directly with the devs*, unlike the rest of us. Plus, they will have a title of "class advocate", which carries with it a moral legitimacy of a "representative of the people" whether that title is worthy or not.

Furthermore, it is also just naive wishful thinking to think that the advocates will be merely impartial unbiased conduits of information. Like in every other situation in real life, the job of an *advocate* isn't to present both sides of an issue fairly, but instead to push for his/her particular agenda, framing the issue in a light most positive to the advocate's position and most negative to the advocate's opponents. And the deciding factor of which advocate "wins" isn't much based on the quality of the evidence, but instead is based overwhelmingly on which advocate did a better job of framing the issue and manipulating the discussion.

By even putting out a call for "class advocates", I think the devs have admitted that when it came to the class "balancing" feedback threads pre-mod4, the forums yielded a very low signal-to-noise ratio when it comes to getting quality feedback, and so they need some help going forward in order to filter out the tons of noise. And I think they're right. But instead of putting *one* person in charge of feedback for one class, who WILL have a louder voice than the rest of us, instead just raise the standards associated with what constitutes *quality feedback*. Just state at the outset: "Your feedback doesn't mean squat to us unless you provide numerical test data, a detailed account of how those data were obtained, and well-reasoned arguments that encompasses all relevant aspects of the game." And then just lay down the mod hammer on the preview feedback threads.

"CW is OP because they kill me in 1 rotation in PVP, I demand nerf" <-- deleted
"CW is too weak because I can't finish Ghost Stories without help, I demand buff" <-- deleted
"The CW's Assailant feat isn't working right, and here is all of the test data that shows this is true..." <-- VALUABLE FEEDBACK

ambisinisterr · August 2014

The Official Feedback threads are not how feedback is given normally.

They were unique threads with unique rules which were consistently ignored. (Angry Face)
General feedback is not moderated anywhere near as much because the feedback requested is a lot less specific.

For goodness sakes I still can't believe how freaking hard it was for you guys to follow the simple rule of not discussing other people's feedback. Had you followed that incredibly simple concept I wouldn't have lost two hours a day for two months of my life. (Angry Face)

ambisinisterr · August 2014

Who said there will only be one class advocate?

There's no rule saying that will be the case.

Additionally, I promise you my feedback means nothing more to the devs. It really doesn't and it's not wishful thinking. The very first thing I have to supply is not numbers but support. The same will be needed from advocates. Compile a list of major concerns and show examples of people agreeing and disagreeing with you.

And just to stomp out the mis-information...
This was not requested by the developers. This was something Akromatik wanted to do for some time now which Zeb and I had wanted done basically from the start of the game.

And all the fear about personal agendas...
The only way that won't come into play is if you listen to nobody. Even right now hearing the petty arguments sends my head spinning because everybody is looking from a personal perspective that oft times blinds them from the big picture.

The only means to squash agendas is not to close the door but to open them to a wider range but that doesn't mean having a room full of screaming people. It means gathering feedback from a larger variety of ways and class advocates are just one more way to gather feedback. It's not a replacement for the forums or social media sites, it is an additional tool to gather from a smaller group of players who are passionate about the game.

l0th4ri0 · August 2014

The downfall to any western civilization can be traced to a point wherein the citizenry was allowed to spend tax money.

Giving the players any kind of voice in this game's inner workings besides bug reporting is asking for a great deal of trouble. We do not deserve even the smallest amount of trust with the vision of how this game is "supposed" to be. We have proven, as a body, that we are selfish, cruel, shortsighted, overly-biased, unrepentant, boorish, impatient, undisciplined, and self-contradicting.

I think if this idea is being seriously considered at the corporate level AT ALL someone needs to get their head examined.

I'm not kidding.

Hopefully, this is kind of a late April Fool's joke or more of the "throw them what they think is a bone, but ignore them" kind of thing like what happened with the preview feedback.

Bug reports. Nothing more. And even those, double check to make sure we aren't lying our asses off.

I'm still not kidding. I know us.

zacazu · August 2014

well, the first thing I would do, if I may, would create an "unofficial" topic about pve / pvp there in the barracks. I let people discuss there and do a survey of the arguments (notes in red to troll arguments, but that would be reported if they represented a constant).

That is precisely what I suggested in m1 (well... +/-).

Feedback thread for the idea of class Advocates

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