189 replies to this topic

[Agent 0 Fortune]

You can make polls in the Feature Suggestion Forum. Seeing how this is council to vote on game features, that seems appropriate.

[Livewyr]

OP seems fairly well reasonable. (Have no disagreements.)

However: If we are going to kick this into gear- we need to do it.

(Only concern is "who is from what section?"- We know generally who the competitive players are; but who gets to represent the "casual" section?)

[MischiefSC]

Sandpit threw his voice in from afar and I think it has a lot of salient points to it -

We're not talking about some overall community council but one representative of the community for game balance stuff. So you've got 3 segments; solo, group and 12man (competitive).

I'd say we need 3 reps for solo, 2 for group and 2 for competitive.

I recommend we get a heavily moderated thread just for names - if it's not a name of who you support it gets removed.

You run it for X days, then collect the names and see if they're willing to take a spot.

Of those who are willing to do the job you let them (by personal opinion) put themselves in solo, group or 12man potential positions.

THEN you have a poll (3, really) one for each slot.

You can't have anything like an election without it being a popularity contest of sorts. That's the nature of republics.

From there we can codify what they're doing.

[Agent 0 Fortune]

MischiefSC, on 12 September 2014 - 03:29 PM, said:

Sandpit threw his voice in from afar and I think it has a lot of salient points to it -

I think we need to exclude banned users out of the gate, simply from a transparency perspective. They are more than welcome to contribute through proxies, but the representatives need to be accessible and visible on the MWO forums.
Which brings up a second point, term limits. how long does a council seat last? Certainly there has to be an opportunity for new players (or returning players) to join the council.

Edited by Agent 0 Fortune, 12 September 2014 - 03:38 PM.

[keith]

do it plz for the sake of this IP. get logical ppl is all i ask

[Felbombling]

I've thought about this for a good chunk of the day, and I think it is doomed to failure. Without a redesign to how LRMs work and the spotting mechanics, positive changes to how ECM works will remove one of the LRM checks they've designed around. So, while we may all come to a consensus on how ECM should work, LRMs will start wrecking everyone and PGI will have the opportunity to say, as Homeless Bill has already suggested, "We told you so."

[MischiefSC]

StaggerCheck, on 12 September 2014 - 03:42 PM, said:

I've thought about this for a good chunk of the day, and I think it is doomed to failure. Without a redesign to how LRMs work and the spotting mechanics, positive changes to how ECM works will remove one of the LRM checks they've designed around. So, while we may all come to a consensus on how ECM should work, LRMs will start wrecking everyone and PGI will have the opportunity to say, as Homeless Bill has already suggested, "We told you so."

So part of the concept is, like anything PGI does internally, going to be subject to testing. If it doesn't work right off the bat you test it, rework it and and try again.

[ipox]

Please note how incredibly narrow the scope is!

I'm 100% behind Bill. I've never seen anything from him I've disagreed with in any appreciable manner. And I will try to find time and energy if called on to help in any way.

[RaKa]

100% with you on this one Homeless. You have my vote.

[Xarian]

I hereby put the following issue on the table:
that we move to Feature Suggestion and start a poll.

[Wolfways]

Gas Guzzler, on 12 September 2014 - 03:10 PM, said:

I think Russ is also trying to show us how difficult it is to all come up with a solution to ECM that everyone is happy with.

Making it do what it did in BT would be a good start imo. After all, isn't this "A BattleTech Game"? I still don't know why PGI felt that ECM (and the equipment associated with it) needed to be completely different from TT.

[rusticatedcharm]

MischiefSC, on 12 September 2014 - 03:29 PM, said:

Sandpit threw his voice in from afar and I think it has a lot of salient points to it -

We're not talking about some overall community council but one representative of the community for game balance stuff. So you've got 3 segments; solo, group and 12man (competitive).

I'd say we need 3 reps for solo, 2 for group and 2 for competitive.

I recommend we get a heavily moderated thread just for names - if it's not a name of who you support it gets removed.

You run it for X days, then collect the names and see if they're willing to take a spot.

Of those who are willing to do the job you let them (by personal opinion) put themselves in solo, group or 12man potential positions.

THEN you have a poll (3, really) one for each slot.

You can't have anything like an election without it being a popularity contest of sorts. That's the nature of republics.

From there we can codify what they're doing.

It is absolutely imperative that the council takes input from all sections of the playerbase!!

[ProfessorD]

I support Bill's procedure on this completely.

Gas Guzzler, on 12 September 2014 - 03:10 PM, said:

I think Russ is also trying to show us how difficult it is to all come up with a solution to ECM that everyone is happy with.

Yep. This might be one of the best strategic decisions he's ever made. Whether he honestly wants us to succeed at developing a proposal, or just wants a chance to say "I told you so," Russ gets a respect point from me for the strategic cleverness here.

Murzao, on 12 September 2014 - 03:12 PM, said:

With the advent of UAVs (and now no double arty/air so UAV is literally always the 2nd choice so half+ of the team has it) that gets spammed and oldschool CB style actual scouting.....how the F is ECM a problem nowadays?

...

This is why the group needs to be small enough to work effectively. They'll have to put together not just a proposal on how to fix ECM, but a thorough understanding of all the ways other systems interact with ECM and the effects the change proposal might have.

Edited by ProfessorD, 12 September 2014 - 04:39 PM.

[Homeless Bill]

I'm copying a reddit post from [SJR] TheMagician here because I think this expands and introduces some even better approaches. He has my vote for being on this council:

A Player Council (PC) is basically a player advisory group to the game developers. The PC can bring issues to the developers from the community, preferably in a consolidated, concise manner. If consensus is needed, the PC can work to do so, but consensus should not be a criteria for bringing issues to the table. The PC can also respond to dev requests to investigate certain issues within the player community.

In matters of balance or game mechanics, the PC should reach out to the community at wide, and ask for input, ideas, concepts, etc., on how to address the issue. Based on these replies, the PC should meet and discuss the proposals, but not make any decisions. The PC should identify those proposals that are most worth considering, and then set up a meeting with the community members who submitted the proposals. This meeting could even be an open meeting streamed on twitch (or another streaming site), where the balance issue is discussed, concerns are aired, proposals are criticized, etc. The PC can also gather community input, such as via polls, when needed to narrow down the options of the best path forward.

Afterwards, the PC should meet again and decide on which proposal to mark-up. The PC then begins a mark-up, which is to edit the proposal as necessary to prepare to provide it to the devs. The mark-up should include any notes/information or explanations that are needed to ensure that the proposal is clear. The PC then provides the proposal to the community to vote on. If it passes, the PC should then send the proposal to the developer contact, and setup a meeting over the next week to go over the proposal.

[MischiefSC]

rusticatedcharm, on 12 September 2014 - 04:22 PM, said:

It is absolutely imperative that the council takes input from all sections of the playerbase!!

Elsewhere someone had the brilliant idea of just changing the name, because it's not so much a council as a task force, which is a better term for it.

The idea behind this task force is simply to collect and collate the player ideas - all of them, and then debate them intelligently. The biggest issue we always have as a community is that for every good idea and intelligent suggestion there is 30 posts of people insulting each other or wandering off topic or just flat out trolling. The task force collects the players ideas, distills them a bit (for example 10 suggestions that are all the same thing end up as 1 suggestion) and then discusses them in a closed debate between those people - all people we know can intelligently discuss a position on something.

At the same time the community debates it like we always do but we have those concise, mostly respected opinions to draw upon to help shape that debate. Then we re-collect the now twice-distilled results of that into a handful of coherent ideas we vote on.

Then the community votes, task force presents to PGI.

Everyone gets a pony and a prize.

[KamikazeRat]

im going to wiegh in, for what little it means... all of this, will go nowhere without PGI.

What i mean is, the more people get an idea in their head, they're going to think they are the best ones to do it, start a "lets do this" thread and then we end up with 100 of them.

this debate needs to be in a defined area, in a defined manner. and if it is defined by US...then everyone is going to have a different idea on how it should be defined.

so, someone impartial, non-involved, needs to define the council, manner of selection, and location of discussion, otherwise i fear it will devolve into bickering fairly quickly, just on the manner of selection, way before the matter at hand even hits the table.

EDIT: sorry if that comes out a little negative, but i think its the truth of any mass-scale open discussion, look at goverments and how long it takes them to come to any sort of conclusion, and they have to look each other in the face and do it, imagine those behind computer screen reaching a concensus on who gets to be "more important"

Edited by KamikazeRat, 12 September 2014 - 05:00 PM.

[Bhael Fire]

My vote is to vote by overall idea/suggestion in the Feature Suggestions section. We do not need an elected council; we all are the council.

Besides, it's not like there'll be more than a couple solid suggestions at any given time anyway.

If somebody wants to weed through the best suggestions then put those to a vote, then cool. But I do not condone an election of council members, as this is a slippery slope that leads to more problems than it solves.

[Dirus Nigh]

Will this counsel just end up being the top clique in the competitive group?

There have been a handful of good proposals over the past two years on how IW should work. Will this counsel try to find those ideas in the archived posts?

[MischiefSC]

Dirus Nigh, on 12 September 2014 - 05:22 PM, said:

Will this counsel just end up being the top clique in the competitive group?

There have been a handful of good proposals over the past two years on how IW should work. Will this counsel try to find those ideas in the archived posts?

We've already got DocBach and Homeless Bill digging up and collecting them, Khobai is putting up a general poll, we're moving that way very effectively. The idea isn't to have it be a clique at all; just a task force of sorts to collect and coordinate the data.

[1453 R]

100% behind you, Bill. Like, no, really - if you need me to do anything to help, I'm a PM away.

This is an unprecedented chance to get some real, honest work done, and the first thing we need to do is organize how we're going to do it. You and I both agree on that, and you're a much more respected and valuable community figure than I am. Matter of fact, I'ma wander over to my version of this thread now that I have a spare moment at work and link this one into it. Got to get people consolidated and pushing in the right direction.

Edited by 1453 R, 12 September 2014 - 05:53 PM.