Roy Batty68
Caldari
Immortal Dead
   |
Posted - 2008.08.28 13:09:00 -
[1]
A couple things I've noticed recently:
1) The community has lost traction in regards to where CCP is going with the game in general. Things are said such as, "We have a set of design goals that are our baseline for all changes", but what exactly that is isn't explained. Because they aren't explained, people guess. And then we're left arguing over stupid things that no one can prove.
If player X says, "CCP are totally caving to the carebears. Nonconsentual PVP is dead", it would be nice to reply to player X with a, "Please quit posting nonsense and go read this post by CCP DevABorC".
Since we don't have much in the way of reassurance from CCP that player X is indeed a drama queen forum ho, other forum ninnys start to believe him. It then turns into this self feeding chicken little convention.
Summary: We need something like a quarterly Where The Game is Going in General type of dev blog with with a dedicated secion on how CCP is planning to ensure Eve retains it dark, cut throat nature. Or, at the very least, a big shot dev to drop in to random threads dropping the hammer on the chicken littles. Something we can refer the never ending supply of doom casters and "nerf griefer" people to. Oveur used to do this.
2) When you make or propose drastic changes to the game... SILENCE IS NOT GOLDEN.
The speed changes put on Sisi had aspects that were almost nonsensical. It would have been so much better if someone had dropped by the testers thread and said something like, "Sorry... got the mass wrong on minnie bs. Our bad" or, "Yeah, minnie bs had to have mass increased and given the agility of a dead cow because when you combined the wazijammer with the cugglelopper, the nano went supernova"... or whatever.
However, not saying anything at all just leaves us guessing again. And quite frankly takes quite a bit of steam out of my "i want to go test for CCP" engines.
Throw on top of that the utter lack of moderation on the testers thread, allowing it to become a 70+ page debate thread on, "NANO NERF - To be, or not to be!", and hence totally useless to anyone actually testing... Well, my volunteer to test care-o-meter pegged out at 0 with a quickness.
Summary: If you want us to test proposed changes seriously, you need to be serious about it yourselves in regards to communicating with us. Not just leave us to it and see what we find. I'm sure you get some amount of data with the just leave us to it approach, but what you're really missing is potential user buy in and better understanding for just what the heck you're trying to achieve.
I guess my analysis of the situation is simple. The current style of dev blogs aren't cutting it. They're good for an overview, but there is some depth missing in the overall communication front.
Sig removed, inappropriate content. If you would like further details please mail [email protected] ~Saint |