1306 replies to this topic

[SilentWolff]

Thronde, on 12 September 2014 - 03:07 PM, said:

Oh look, a popularity contest.

Alright, alright, I'll nominate myself then, cause I'm popular with no one

[Dirgez]

So we need a council now to tell the community what to think? Don't get me wrong, Many of these names are very respectable with opinions that I could agree with on many topics but do we really need a "ruling class" to knuckleunder? Do we need forum gods to worship?

While those named have opinions that I like, many also have opinions that I do not like. I refuse to give power to any small group no matter how trivial the actual power is. (I should add that some of those persons that have opinions that I agree with also have opinions that I do not agree with.)

What it comes down to is, no matter how authoritative the opinion is from a council, it is not my opinion, which with a council, doesn't really matter.

Edited by WM Dirges, 12 September 2014 - 04:10 PM.

[TB Freelancer]

Agent 0 Fortune, on 12 September 2014 - 03:44 PM, said:

Isn't one of the biggest issues that lead to this moment, the lack of community interaction from PGI?
Electing someone who is unable or unwilling to contribute on these forums presents the exact same problems. I believe those players can contribute greatly as advisers but lack the visibility required for a counsel seat.

Not really. PGI has been a lot better than most devs, particularly over the last year. What brought us to this point was a few highly vocal, extremely ignorant malcontents who poured every ounce of energy they had into making this place miserable no matter what PGI did or didn't do.

A handful of the nuttiest crackpots removed from the scene, a handful of posts from PGI and look at how things are already calming right down. That is just how toxic some people were to this place and what brought things to this point.

But now, just as PGI is out from under IGP's thumb to succeed or fail on its own, BUT so are we, with the offer they put on the table.

Time to put on the big boy pants boys and girls.

Edited by TB Freelancer, 12 September 2014 - 04:06 PM.

[Garandos]

Livewyr, on 12 September 2014 - 03:50 PM, said:

Are you not a member of the community?


(Just figured one could modify the OP here rather than start a whole new thread of the exact same type- in order to direct conversation towards the persons in question, and possible additions.)

Indeed i dod get to page 7, but, as i am from germany, its getting kinda late, will do a complete pass tomorrow.

[rusticatedcharm]

Adiuvo, on 12 September 2014 - 12:05 PM, said:

Nominating people then...

Kaffeangst/JagerXII/Heimdelight (some of the top bigs pilots in the game, need input of an assault player)

I'd think that 2 of those people don't really comport themselves in a manner deserving to be community representatives to PGI. One plays on his wifes account so he can artificially inflate his elo, and almost never PUGs solo. The other goes on different teamspeaks to flame people and has history of verbally abusing people on /r/outreachhpg. The amount of vitriol or outright downtalking that comes from both of them is really unacceptable.

I'd like to nominate Bladesplint as a solo PUGer representative. He is a rather experienced player and very well qualified for this position. It is important that solo que players not be disenfranchised in this process as they represent almost 50% of MWO's player base.

Edited by rusticatedcharm, 12 September 2014 - 04:18 PM.

[IceWeasel]

I'ld like to second for Bishop Stiener

[Bishop Steiner]

IceWeasel, on 12 September 2014 - 04:14 PM, said:

I'ld like to second for Bishop Stiener

I WILL TK you.

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 12 September 2014 - 04:16 PM.

[Livewyr]

Bishop Steiner, on 12 September 2014 - 04:16 PM, said:

I WILL TK you.

Reported!

[Dark Jackal]

Well, council issues aside, you won't find much consensus about anything because we're not here socially interacting for the sake of some form of BattleTech version of planetary council interaction. There are a number of false starts that need to be addressed.

1) Need: For starters, I'm not quite clear on why there is a need for a council of 3, 5, 7 ... whatever in the first place. Sure, we get together to do stuff together but I really don't see the point when PGI does solicit for feedback all the time. PGI does read your feedback after all. It may not in a fashion folks feel it is being heard but, PGI already has a way to have your voice heard on issues someone from the player base wishes to discuss.

2) Topics: I can only think of a handful of things that folks really disagree with that one would consider pressing issues. In fact, I can almost count them on my fingers. It's not like we have so many problems or amount of things to do with MWO. And, some of these topics don't need a consensus at all. After all, you don't need a consensus on lack of maps in the game. Russ already explained the 1.5 guys working on new maps and they're looking into other issues. Why beat a dead horse?

3) Audience: I've been on and off on the forums since I got the Legendary Pack. In some cases, I remember most of the players from previous leagues I was on and have somewhat an understanding of their view. That being said, we really don't have the numbers of non-active on the forums participating like you would where a consensus approach is not going to reach those people. Should we "not care" about the silent majority? Seems like a bad move especially when PGI has the metrics of what everyone does even for the folks that do not participate. PGI has a clearer overall picture so I think the Council Audience is going to be somewhat focused around the folks mainly on the forums.

I could probably think of a few more items but those three are suffices for now.

[Serious Table]

I can't nominate Homeless Bill quite hard enough.

[1453 R]

Lockwood, knock it off. You've made your point, Bishop's removed himself from the vote (sorry Bishop, I missed a few pages of discussion while working on my post between chats at work), and thus your purpose of denying Bishop a seat has been accomplished. Quit already – this is important, stop trying to gum it up.

ANYWAYZ!

A couple of other posts gave me an idea I honestly like a lot more than a semi-permanent player-run council, especially after finding/reading Russ’ post. Instead of treating this like a nominations thread for public office (which it isn’t)…what we should be doing is organizing an explicitly temporary player-run task force, razor-focused down on the issue of ECM.

Don’t even call it a council. Call it just exactly what it is – a task force or task group. They have one job – guide player discussion on ECM and narrow down the community’s voice into a viable proposal for this one issue Russ has potentially given us the reins for. They manage the community polls for ECM, keep their finger on the discussion, and as has been pointed out their primary task is culling the wheat from the chaff and putting a polish on it, proposing the Good Ideas for additional community refinement and discussion and making sure the Bad Ideas (and the bad posters) never see the light of day. And when the job is done, one way or another, these guys go back to being regular ordinary joes. They may or may not be tasked with additional work later, if this sort of thing takes off, but I’m betting the community will be more civil and willing to engage with a temporary task group than it would be with a Player Council set above it, even if they were set above it by the community itself.

As such, I propose the following as a loose framework of what to do:

1.) Assemble a list of reasonable, respected players who’re willing to spend the next month or two guiding a discussion of ECM and what to do with it. No Badges of Office, no baroque requirements like being a married college professor with four kids and a ferret, no anything. Ask these people two questions: are you willing to devote your time for the next few months to helping Piranha and the community fix ECM?, and would the community be willing to listen to anything you have to say? If the answer is “Yes” to both, you have a candidate. These candidates (seven sounds like a good number of top heads for this particular task group) are then voted upon by the community at large. The process of collecting and voting upon names should take no longer than a week – we need to get to striking while the iron’s hot and Russ is willing to listen, and more importantly we need to show that we’re able to motive and organize ourselves effectively enough and quickly enough to be worth consulting when Piranha is having issues like this.

2.) Create ONE ECM Task Group Discussion Thread, in which all players are encouraged to post their ideas in a concise manner, and keep it as clean as possible. Ask Niko to sticky this thread for the duration of the task assignment. Once we have our task leaders, they need to see what the community wants to do, and I know that if I were tasked with heading up an initiative like this, I would be very frustrated trying to follow seventeen different threads scattered across the first five pages. One, singular thread, akin to Guild Wars 2’s Community Development Initiative threads (look it up, it’s pretty much exactly what we’re trying to do here minus the task leaders) is something the people we vote in can keep an easy track on. They may spend all their forum time reading that one thread, sure, but that way they’ll know where all the ideas are. The task leaders should be guiding the discussion at this stage, doing their best to point out flaws for correction and to let people know which ideas are floaters and which ones are sinkers. This should not be from their own opinions, but a simple analysis by the people we’ve all decided we want to head up this process that a given idea is Up or Down. Kinda like manual up/downvoting in Reddit, except without the mindless bullscheiss that happens on every Reddit ever.

Give this process, say, two to three weeks. Enough time for people to ruminate on their proposals and get some good discussion in, but we cannot afford to stagnate. If this whole mess takes six months, then it’s taken too long and we’ll have lost our shot/proven that we can’t come to a proper consensus. Two to three weeks should be plenty of time to get first-draft proposals.

3.) The task leaders, and ONLY the task leaders, hammer out the collected Good Idea first drafts into a poll thread, which is locked to poll ONLY (no written replies permitted). The Good Idea first drafts are each described as clearly and concisely as possible, probably with links to a cleaned-up version of the proposal by its creator in another locked thread. Matter of fact, there should be a locked thread created after Step 2 which contains absolutely nothing except the Good Idea proposals, for easy reference. Anyways. The poll thread is used to collect absolutely nothing but numerical data. No discussion whatsoever is allowed in the voting thread. You don’t let people discuss their ballots at the voting booths in a political election, do you? No. We need clear, unambiguous data as to which proposals are worth refining and which are let go. This process should, ideally, take no more than three days, but will likely need a week to ensure good numbers, and should be publically advertised with, ideally, an Announcement or even a Command Chair post linking to the player-generated discussions and polls. Which would be a good idea throughout, but will be especially important here.

4.) Iterate Steps 2 and 3 as needed, but do it QUICKLY. If we have a clear winner after the first round of voting, then we have a winner, and the task leaders move on to Step 5. If there are two or three proposals which are (reasonably) neck-and-neck, then we go back to Step 2, but on an accelerated timetable. Again, we cannot afford to stagnate. This has to keep moving, keep showing progress, or Piranha will very rightfully write the whole thing off as yet more senseless, round-and-round community bickering. This is why we elect task leaders in the first place. These guys can, at any point after the first Step 3, decide that things are starting to mire up and force things into Step 5.

5.) Consolidate the top community choice(s) into a single proposal, then attach it to a “Yes/No” poll, and ask the community if they want it done. It should be made very, very clear in this poll that you are not voting for “This proposal or some other idea you would rather see instead.” The final Step 5 poll is the community voting for “This proposal, or flat nothing done and also you guys never get to do this again.” Ideally, we should be seeing a 100% Yes rate on this poll, but we know better than that. Nevertheless, we need to be very, very certain that we’re ready to put our bacon on the line for Step 5. This is where we show Piranha that yes, the MechWarrior Online community can get scheiss done. This is where we prove to them that we are worth listening to, and even if we and Piranha don’t always agree, or they can’t do whatever we propose because of technical or other such dev-side issues, we’re still effectively able to engage in useful discourse.

After that, it’s all on Piranha as to what happens, but if we can do this, or something like this, then I’d say we have a very good chance at getting some real good accomplished in this game.

[DEN_Ninja]

MischiefSC, on 12 September 2014 - 12:32 PM, said:

As to votes -

I'd absolutely go Konivig, Homeless Bill, Bishop Steiner, Roland, Adiuvo, Saxie to start with.

If we could un-ban Sandpit or Roadbeer and either was willing to be cool and constructive I think either/both would have a lot to add to the discussion.

MischiefSC, on 12 September 2014 - 12:36 PM, said:

Here's the thing though. This is being done for a *reason*. A lot of these folks got banned for being outraged over slights, real and perceived. While I don't agree with anyone doing stuff that gets you banned (I find it unlikely anyone has been banned for regular/civil forum behavior, even when it's critical of PGI. I do that all the time) I do get that many of these people have insights into what has really pissed people off the most over the years in regards to this topic.

This is being done to mend fences and build bridges. I get the sense that Russ is a bit skeptical we can carry our half of the burden and I get why - we have a tendency to flip out like spoiled children and not agree with anything. We're a group of mostly middle-aged gamers, expectations should be on the low-side.

If this is going to happen though let's not blow an opportunity to actually turn stuff around and use this how it's best intended.

Sam Donelly, on 12 September 2014 - 12:36 PM, said:

People have been pissed on both sides of this. Russ came forward with the olive branch and I think we need to give the opportunity to come forward and join in the civil discussion to the people who have been banned. Gaijin recent has done the same, giving their players amnesty for a fresh start once they released Star Conflict.

Listen. There are some folks that don't deserve one bit to come back. Victor Morson should never come back to this game because he's infamous on 'both sides'

If Sandpit, Roadbeet, and etc come back and can focus purely on their expertise to council and stop being continually inflammatory then why the hell not.

Until they can prove me otherwise. Personally there are very few people I 'want' on this council. Other than like Kon, Bill, Heim, maybe like a few other folks. It needs to be a very balanced council in terms of ideas and well personality.

[Wolfways]

Homeless Bill, Joseph Mallan, Bishop Steiner, Livewyr.

Because while i don't always agree with them they do have opinions i respect, and sometimes even good ideas

[Garandos]

As a reminder, please try to keep discussion out of this topic, we simply want to collect names here

While i really think discussion is good and we need a lot of discussion here, maybe we can create another topic for that?

[Peiper]

I'd like to nominate Zyllos. I don't always agree with him, but he has a level head, good ideas, and the rare ability to see things from other points of view, consider and compromise.

[ArchMage Sparrowhawk]

bishop Steiner, koniving, sandpit

[jozkhan]

Just set up a thread 1 person 1 nomination and then move to a poll...

It's gonna be waaay into 2015 just to get the first item ECM resolved, everytime the ball is in our park we want to move quickly as everytime the ball is with PGI movement will be slow. so hubba hubba hubba.

Of course not so fast we dont give things the right amount of consideration but let's not allow PGI to drag this out eternally

Edited by jozkhan, 12 September 2014 - 04:36 PM.

[Garandos]

jozkhan, on 12 September 2014 - 04:36 PM, said:

Just set up a thread 1 person 1 nomination and then move to a poll...

It's gonna be waaay into 2015 just to get the first item ECM resolved, everytime the ball is in our park we want to move quickly as everytime the ball is with PGI movement will be slow. so hubba hubba hubba.

Of course not so fast we dont give things the right amount of consideration but let's not allow PGI to drag this out eternally

We cant create polls anymore.

[jozkhan]

well someone will have to switch the lights on

also on the council please no mods, no PGI and no NGNG lets keep it customers only

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

[DEN_Ninja]

The nomination's that I have seen or nominate myself.

Competitive Player Council Members; Heimdelight, JagerXII, KaffeAngst, Adiuvo, and either TheMagician or Siriothrax

Community Player Council Members; Egomane, Homeless Bill, Koniving, Heffay, theB33f (I lol), Chronojam, RebasKradd, Bishop Steiner, Carrioncrows, Serious_Table (that is if you won't be too crazy this time), and possibly Sandpit or Roadbeer

Science Officers; Kiiyor, Smurfy, and Li Song

Various other Player Council Members; Livewyr, TopDawg, IraqiWalker, Roland, Saxie, MechwarriorBuddah, 151st Light Horse, DocBach, MischiefSC, Stalkerr, Andersbot, Redshift2k5, Jman5 and other nominated candidates.

Edited by Tichorius Davion, 12 September 2014 - 05:11 PM.