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A Foundry Players Council
drogyn1701
Member Posts: 3,606 Media Corps
During the discussion in last night's Foundry Roundtable podcast, an idea was floated: create a Foundry Players Council, an advisory committee that can put together a cohesive message for Cryptic on which small update (along the lines of Taco's asset update) should be the next priority.
Here is the broad strokes of how it could work.
1) Elect council members. The Foundry authors community would choose from among ourselves people willing serve. I'd say around 5 to 7 people. These should be people who are willing to undertake the work to do this, willing to be open and transparent and willing to listen to the Foundry community and set aside their individual wants in favor things that benefit the whole community and then communicate with Cryptic in an adult manner.
2) Solicit feedback from the community. Start a thread, asking people what the next asset addition should be with an eye toward things that benefit the most people. Council members would also keep an eye on any outside discussion in chat channels, the forum and anywhere else to get ideas of what people want or need.
3) Meet and discuss. The council gets together via Skype or something similar and talks about the thread, and any other feedback they might have obtained. They hash out what should be the next asset addition that Cryptic should focus on. My advice would be to keep it manageable and specific.
4) Make a presentation to Cryptic. The council should put together a request proposal for their next chosen asset or asset group in a concise written form. The council should elect a spokesperson (someone on good terms with Cryptic would be a plus
) and that person gives this proposal to Captain Smirk, who has already expressed some interest, and he can get it to the appropriate person at Cryptic.
5) Move on to the next thing. Once this priority asset has been added (or if it is added), the process starts again to find the next priority asset, and make that presentation to Cryptic. And so on.
I envision this as a good way to show Cryptic how one of the things we want is just small, regular asset additions. I think if we can get a good group of people together that the community can trust to speak for them, and if we get good participation from Cryptic, this can be a way to cut through the noise of the multitude of request posts. With one voice we can tell Cryptic "This is the next thing we want," and it really will be we doing the talking.
I want to get some feedback from the community. So if you have any ideas, concerns or questions about this proposal, please post here. Thank you.
Here is the broad strokes of how it could work.
1) Elect council members. The Foundry authors community would choose from among ourselves people willing serve. I'd say around 5 to 7 people. These should be people who are willing to undertake the work to do this, willing to be open and transparent and willing to listen to the Foundry community and set aside their individual wants in favor things that benefit the whole community and then communicate with Cryptic in an adult manner.
2) Solicit feedback from the community. Start a thread, asking people what the next asset addition should be with an eye toward things that benefit the most people. Council members would also keep an eye on any outside discussion in chat channels, the forum and anywhere else to get ideas of what people want or need.
3) Meet and discuss. The council gets together via Skype or something similar and talks about the thread, and any other feedback they might have obtained. They hash out what should be the next asset addition that Cryptic should focus on. My advice would be to keep it manageable and specific.
4) Make a presentation to Cryptic. The council should put together a request proposal for their next chosen asset or asset group in a concise written form. The council should elect a spokesperson (someone on good terms with Cryptic would be a plus
) and that person gives this proposal to Captain Smirk, who has already expressed some interest, and he can get it to the appropriate person at Cryptic.5) Move on to the next thing. Once this priority asset has been added (or if it is added), the process starts again to find the next priority asset, and make that presentation to Cryptic. And so on.
I envision this as a good way to show Cryptic how one of the things we want is just small, regular asset additions. I think if we can get a good group of people together that the community can trust to speak for them, and if we get good participation from Cryptic, this can be a way to cut through the noise of the multitude of request posts. With one voice we can tell Cryptic "This is the next thing we want," and it really will be we doing the talking.
I want to get some feedback from the community. So if you have any ideas, concerns or questions about this proposal, please post here. Thank you.
The Foundry Roundtable live Saturdays at 7:30PM EST/4:30PM PST on twitch.tv/thefoundryroundtable
Post edited by drogyn1701 on
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Joe_King
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We can name them Ambassadors!
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That's kind of what this thread is trying to figure out. Most player councils in other games are either voted on by the community or chosen by the game developer from applications.
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That said make sure that this gets passed around to as many people as possible so you have a wide support group. It will make things easier.
As how to get the elections started.... I will post my ideas on that once I'm home.
And if part of this post doesn't make sense sorry. Im on my phone lol.
Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker.
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Seriously, though, I like this idea.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
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Frankly speaking, it's good to see an effort to benefit the authoring community as a whole.
And frankly speaking, unless Cryptic/PWE acknowledges this effort, this is an enormous waste of time. Lists can be generated; getting actual traction/actionables from Cryptic/PWE is another story.
Call me optimistic if Cryptic/PWE acknowledges this effort.
That's certainly a challenge to overcome. We like to joke about how some of us were accused of being a "Shadowy Foundry Cabal" that was controlling Cryptic during last year's rewards debate, but I think we should work hard to avoid becoming that in reality.
Therefor choosing who is on the Council would be key, and I think it should be completely open nominations and open voting. You would want a diverse group of people who were willing to be transparent about their decisions, and any recommendation to Cryptic should be made public and should include a rationale. "We think this object should be a priority because..."
I for one definitely would want as many differing voices as we could get on this Council. The better to be able to figure out what objects we can recommend that would benefit everyone.
Yes, obviously we need support from Cryptic/PWE for this to have any traction, but we're very early in the process (we just came up with the idea last night). Sirboulevard tweeted Captain Smirk and he said he thought it was interesting and wanted us to kick the idea around and see what we came up with.
In order for the council to be successful it should have a limited specific mandate. I would argue that it's mandate should be limited to requests for in game assets, from either Tribble or Holodeck, for inclusion in the Foundry. It should not accept requests for new assets or functionality.
Joe_King
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I don't think this should be a "vote" thing.
Voting for something like this (if it becomes a reality) has the downfall of The Cult of Personality.
To me, I don't want the most popular as decided by some vote determining this. No scenario with voting involved makes me comfortable.
I propose that instead of a community vote, what occurs is that anyone can be nominated, hell even nominate themselves if they wish.
I think a council like this should be chosen by the Community managers and Whatever company people would be involved, from the pool of nominations. It should be people that a contact within Cryptic/PWE (ala Captain Smirk) feels (1) will represent the interests of the community above their own wants AND (2) Be people that our contacts feel they can communicate with effectively.
That's my two cents at the moment.
I'm waiting on change to expand on other aspects of this idea.
Peace -
Is it possible for you to maybe sticky this for "one week" with smirks permission if neccissary
I like the idea and would love to be a part of it
Joe_King
Please leave comments or suggestions on the main thread for Homage to Galris at the following link.
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With that you run into the problem of who picks the assets to be voted on. I don't think Cryptic would want to expend the time to keep up with something like that. We've also tried polls before. We wanted to get a list of the top 25 and we ended up with about 52. That's why I think we need a group of conscientious authors who can cut through all that and come up with the next one thing that Cryptic should add.
Also Cryptic is in the position to know their plans for STO and are already performing this function. They already track their assets and their producers already make these decisions. Polling may not be perfect but it would be more efficient than the conflicts that will arise in a council. This will also allow them to take the opinion of their customers into account.
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Actually they tried this way back when. They created a game council of people that they thought were worthy of it and the fire storm that came from it was enormous to the point they didn't do much on it after (not to mention one person shut down their blog due to the hate). Most people felt there was no choice in the matter, it was a PR stunt etc etc so I don't think letting Cryptic/PWE decide would be in the best interest of anyone.
That said, voting will turn into a "who's more popular" type of situation as a lot of people will vote how they feel about the person (if he's a jerk he's not getting my vote type of thing or I'm voting for my friend) which also doesn't help but it's probably the only sane way to do it unless you bring in community leaders, managers etc to give input on people.
They already do take the opinion of their customers into account but it's hard to actually do when you got thousands of people with different opinions :P
Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker.
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Agreed, but I believe the point of this council is to gauge community desire for particular assets. The point of the poll is to determine the highest vote getter of existing assets and then add them to the Foundry.
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Count me in for X task.
And even within the Republic/LoR domain there are many different types of assets to choose from as the highest priorities. Personally I want all the New Romulus maps more than anything, but I would imagine costume options (especially Republic and Imperial/Tal Shiar uniforms) would get a lot more use out of a bigger chunk of the Foundry authorship, so I would consider that a higher priority.
That's what the council should be about - narrowing down our vast wish lists to a manageable group. Not just our few "favorite" individual assets chosen from all over the game, but a focused set of interrelated assets that can be used together in missions, such as Romulan and Reman costumes from the LoR expansion. Or the different Republic ship textures (brown, Reman and Veteran). Or, well, all the LoR maps. Or some other maps, say, the Solanae Dyson Sphere interiors. Or whatever group of related assets would get the most use from authors. But a group of assets - not a scattershot list of a map here, a few costumes there, and a ship texture or two somewhere else. We could just take an online vote for that, but the assets we get from that wouldn't necessarily be suitable to be used together.
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In addition, this council needs to listen to sources outside the STO Forums and Starbase UGC. They'll want to listen to the Reddit Foundry section and even occasionally ask polls in Zone Chat in game.
In addition, there may need to be a term limit imposed on this council. We cant have the same 7 people for the rest of the game's cycle. Perhaps having people be able to serve 6 month terms, 2 terms consecutively and then be required to take at least one term off to allow fresh blood in.
TRIBBLE Hydra! Hail Janeway!
Indeed. But I also dont want us to get someone who's really darn good on that council never being able to serve again. Hence my proposal for an "off term"
TRIBBLE Hydra! Hail Janeway!
Virinat Dome: 1
Elachi Starbase: 1
Subspace Rift: 1
Counter & Fruit baskets: 1
Starbase (39-Type): 1
Romulan Buildings: 1
Romulan Weapons Rack: 1 2
Romulan Table and Couch: 1
Romulan Screen : 1
Romulan Wall Console: 1
Romulan shuttle: 1
New Romulus Pillars: 1
Orange Thing: 1
Romulan Light: 1
Romulan Carpet: 1
Romulan Desk and Mass Effect Console: 1
Big Screen and square glass window: 1
Bookcase: 1
Romulan Bio bed: 1
Romulan Banner: 1
Barrels: 1
Ground Weapon props: 1 2 3
Romulan Street Light: 1
Wooden Fence: 1
Pipe leak SFX & Crop fences: 1
Elachi S'Golth Skydome / Prop? : 1
Cup Pile: 1
Wooden Chairs + Drink/Seat Emote: 1
Tholian Web Prop: 1
Nimbus III Bar Props: 1 2
Dead Plants: 1
"Cool kid" Emote: 1
"Sorrows" Emote: 1
Nimbus III Buildings: 1
Suliban Helix: 1
Tier 5 Constitution: 1
DS9 Chair (With Dart): 1
Undine Terradome: 1 2
Undine Beam Thing of Death! : 1
Tovan Khev Delete Button: 1
@Sirboulevard
Yeah the council would want to make intelligent requests. We know from Taco that the way they put objects in is in groups, so if the council determined that what people want most and what would benefit the most people is (for example) the newer Romulan stuff, what I think is that they could pick a map, like Gasko station or something, and recommend that Cryptic take the assets from that map and add them.
As for maps, since we know they take longer, might have to be recommended one at a time.
Term limits is a good idea. Like I said earlier we'd have to fight against the "Shadowy Foundry Cabal" notion.