Friends,

You all remember the GÇPDevs answer everything threadGÇ£ (I know for a fact that some of you do at least) that we started this spring, with the intention of GÇô as the title subtly hints at - answering every question therein.

As a brand new Community Developer, I started this project with the full intention of pushing it through no matter what. Then summer came with the final Incarna sprints, the Incarna launch, and all that followed. The summer period was extremely hard in terms of securing any GÇPextraGÇ£ time from developers to spend on answering questions from the thread, and itGÇÿs not going to get any easier. Answering this amount of questions publicly takes a lot longer than many would expect because often you get second thoughts about details that you then want to research, or you want to polish the wording so it-¦s clear and understandable for what you intend it to convey.

Long story short, I grossly understimated the time it would take to finish answering all these questions, and overestimated the man hours I would be able to secure. And I learned a few valuable lessons along the way. One of them being never to use the word GÇPpromiseGÇ£ unless you KNOW the result.

It is time to step up and admit defeat and apologize - we will not be moving this thread over from the old forums. Statistically speaking the project was two thirds of a failure. We answered 347 questions out of the roughly 1100 we received, despite repeated attempts at securing manpower. I can only hope that the questions we did answer made all of this at least somewhat worth it for some of you.

WeGÇÿll go back to the drawing board and figure out different ways to do similar things in the future. To those that took part, waited, and never got what they came for, I humbly offer my most sincere apologies.

-CCP Guard

Something like that sounds more doable for sure :). One of the mistakes I made was to not put a limit on questions per person. Another thing I'm thinking is something where we limit the range of questions, i.e. have a fairly limited topic to focus on each time.

We'll see.

At least you admit you screwed up.

Just my two cents: among the thousand of submitted questions there were a lot of joke\stupid\spam questions, duplicate questions, angry stuff like "when are you going to boost my ship" and questions which were already answered in recent blogs/interviews/dev forum posts.

If you could have somebody to filter out that junk you would probably be able to cut 90% of the noise. As you do not really listen for CSM ideas (god bless you don't ) and there are not much need for them now this could be a task they can handle.

Statistically speaking the project was two thirds of a failure.

How the dancing frak did you arrive at THAT conclusion from this thread?

Such a shame, that was an awesome thread and idea. I hope time can be found to resurrect it when WoD and Dust aren't being time-hogs.

This statement/philosophy should be grilled into ALL CCP employees (especially those at the top) at EVERY CCP meeting from here to eternity:

"Long story short, I grossly understimated the time it would take to finish answering all these questions, and overestimated the man hours I would be able to secure. And I learned a few valuable lessons along the way. One of them being never to use the word GÇPpromiseGÇ£ unless you KNOW the result."

Friends,

You all remember the GÇPDevs answer everything threadGÇ£ (I know for a fact that some of you do at least) that we started this spring, with the intention of GÇô as the title subtly hints at - answering every question therein.

As a brand new Community Developer, I started this project with the full intention of pushing it through no matter what. Then summer came with the final Incarna sprints, the Incarna launch, and all that followed. The summer period was extremely hard in terms of securing any GÇPextraGÇ£ time from developers to spend on answering questions from the thread, and itGÇÿs not going to get any easier. Answering this amount of questions publicly takes a lot longer than many would expect because often you get second thoughts about details that you then want to research, or you want to polish the wording so it-¦s clear and understandable for what you intend it to convey.

Long story short, I grossly understimated the time it would take to finish answering all these questions, and overestimated the man hours I would be able to secure. And I learned a few valuable lessons along the way. One of them being never to use the word GÇPpromiseGÇ£ unless you KNOW the result.

It is time to step up and admit defeat and apologize - we will not be moving this thread over from the old forums. Statistically speaking the project was two thirds of a failure. We answered 347 questions out of the roughly 1100 we received, despite repeated attempts at securing manpower. I can only hope that the questions we did answer made all of this at least somewhat worth it for some of you.

WeGÇÿll go back to the drawing board and figure out different ways to do similar things in the future. To those that took part, waited, and never got what they came for, I humbly offer my most sincere apologies.

-CCP Guard

Wish this kind of communication was the text-book example from CCP.

fine but where can i read those 300 plus aswers?



please dont tell me i have to search whole website......

To CCP Guard,

While I appreciate your honest explanation for what happened, I don't appreciate it took 3 months or so to arrive.

I am very disappointed with the general malaise regarding communicating with the players these days. You're all so afraid of making a mistake communicating that you don't talk to us players.

You'll probably be taking a hit personally now for what is in essence a wider problem at CCP. The fact developers need to pencil in "time", require almost everything outgoing to be vetted and don't have enough general knowledge of the game is symptomatic of the big-time corporate cancer spreading at CCP.

Back in the day Devs would have chimed in from all over in their lunch hours etc and oh my god! maybe even got some things wrong!

Now it is so bureaucratic at CCP everything comes across as an un-enthused, stale PR schpiel. I enjoy much of the game still, but I am finding it harder and harder as time goes by (after 6 years playing) to forgive your management for trying to subdue (or professionalise) one of its best selling/retention points - which was that you felt the Devs were just enthusiastic players building a game they themselves dreamed of playing - free flowing communication and a bit of banter with Devs taken with a pinch of salt was key to that.

It saddens me an opportunity for CCP to show your continued enthusiasm for the game and unique communication style has been missed. Very disappointed with most of the wishy-washy answers we did get, and those we will never get.

Cheers,
Vyk.

fine but where can i read those 300 plus aswers?



please dont tell me i have to search whole website......

Something like that sounds more doable for sure :). One of the mistakes I made was to not put a limit on questions per person. Another thing I'm thinking is something where we limit the range of questions, i.e. have a fairly limited topic to focus on each time.

We'll see.

Well sure you admited defeat but the war is not over CCP Guard.

You need to light up the brofist and call for back up. CCP has 200 devs right? Call for back up, ask for help from any dev that can answer a question to try to answer one or two.


There is a great saying in eve, always outnumbered but never outgunned.


So bust out some major dev hacks from the entire staff from iceland to the uk, to atlanta to shanghai! Blob them and win!