I know Bishop Steiner has dipped out of the running. He was asking if I would get on here and nominate a few other guys to this council, but I will just offer my 2 cents. I think the "Town Hall" twitch was one of the most informative and important broadcasts to get these ideas out there and gain communication within the MWO community. With that, a "town hall" of many unit leaders, or their SME's (subject matter experts), and this council would help. 12 people is a large group but could disseminate those ideas to many people. ECM does need a major overhaul, and having a meeting on TS3 is probably the easiest way to hash out anything.
I would nominate any of the NA Comstar admins to set up an "official/unofficial" town hall channel on their server.....voice permissions could be set up and it could be ran as a "board/council" meeting, however only the designated reps would voice filtered questions from the MWO player base, to the development team. In a symposium. Maybe some Q & A on implementation, timelines, milestones, etc.
Because not everyone knows game development, but there are also many ill-informed gamers out there that want a lot of changes but don't understand the development time or resources to make things happen.....so even many bad suggestions would have to be sifted through. And then there is also feature creep....So having an informed and objective council, that is open to suggestion from POLLS, Q & A sessions, etc. is going to be crucial.
I would suggest quarterly terms...possibly 1/2 year terms. Depending on the extent of workload for gathering data, assessing polls and what not.
To be actually frank, my recommendation would be to issue a "problem" to these responsible individuals, and once their due diligence, research, and data is collected on the problem, as soon as a solution is presented to PGI as "viable"....then their term would end....and another chosen representative would rotate through the council for another task. (this keeps from any one person or group from establishing a privilege)
I don't know about voting....that usually boils down to a popularity contest that you then have to support. I would use the suggestions on this forum, draw from the top names on the list and continue to rotate people through, with the understanding that their focus is on the specific "problem".
An experienced Quality Assurance Lead could organize this team and could also do a pretty good job of identifying a good "councilman" with a small questionnaire.
You know the basics:
When they started MWO, how long been playing Battletech Universe games, digital or TT. How committed they are to MWO success, not just their own success within MWO....etc. I'd say setting up that initial "interview" with ALL of the suggested names should happen. There were some on that list that are banned on the forums.....some of those same people are banned on NAComstar comms as well. There is a reason for being banned.....those people should NOT be allowed to be on this council FOR ANY REASON. Allowing dissention, while creating a positive community building program here would ultimately backfire. The MWO players deserve good, honest, outgoing and compassionate gamers.....ones that are remembered for being contributors and helpers, who have a history in MWO for helping....not for being forum opinion trolls.
I believe Russ and PGI will find the right crew for this job.....but voting other than nominations I think would lead to favoritism. No one really wants that.
Edited by RobinSage, 16 September 2014 - 04:56 PM.