Another vote for khrom(sp) idea here. Make a new forum/section for the freebies and those that are hardup for cash. My question is this: The general section of the forums or the General Pantheon Discussion section? HUGE difference between those two. I would prefer that a new section of the forums be created as well as making it so that the free account holders can post in the Off -topic and introduction sections as well but that is it. I have already expressed my concerns on what I think is happening now with the game and it appears that the forums have begun to be innundated with people that are wanting a game that is soloable by ANY/Everyclass and that has me greatly concerned. I have also noticed a tendency for quicker travel and decreasing the difficulty of the game.
Wandidar said:
A question - if it's a trial, how will you undo it if it fails without alienating one group or the other?
Do you remove anyone from the forums again who is not paid? Do you create another paid "general" forum? Do you tell the paid people to go restrict themselves to what would still be paid only sections of the forum?
What is the exit plan?
What happens if the paid people decide for you - and more or less avoid the general section entirely? Does that create its own rift in the community for you guys to figure out?
I'm really not trying to be intentionally negative - I'm just expressing concern and asking questions.
These are excellent questions Wandidar.
I'm actually fine with letting them view *and* post on all sections of the forum except for the think tank and the apprentice developers area. The ones that can behave themselves, great. The ones that are on Tunare's naughty list, ban the buggars. As many of you have already said, it will take more moderation that present, but that's to be expected. Vanguard's forums let everyone in and they were EXTREMELY busy at one point during alpha and beta phases . There were a few Trolls but everything was handled fine .
Wandidar said:
I remember a few fairly epic - extreme flame heavy threads in the VG forums. Particularly whenever death penalties were raised.
All in good fun, budday :)
Anasyn said:Ok it already kinda sounds like the team has made up their mind. This reminds me of other games currently not released yet who tried to get the community to vote on things and then do what they wanted to begin with.
You say in the poll yes let our fellow supporters join us, but that isn't what will happen. Yes some of the free accounts will be supporters. The vast majority are going to be trolls and jerks from across the internet. I feel it is a poor decision to allow free folks in, because there are way too many trolls, even though there are a good handful nice free supporters.
The vast majority of free accounts will be looking to bash Brad, and this project. We don't need that kind of negativity. We need Positivity, and constructive criticism ONLY.
Khayos said:
You say in the poll yes let our fellow supporters join us, but that isn't what will happen. Yes some of the free accounts will be supporters. The vast majority are going to be trolls and jerks from across the internet. I feel it is a poor decision to allow free folks in, because there are way too many trolls, even though there are a good handful nice free supporters.
The vast majority of free accounts will be looking to bash Brad, and this project. We don't need that kind of negativity. We need Positivity, and constructive criticism ONLY.
the area in bold and italics is the key I am going to respond to here, if you are ONLY looking to have constructive criticism and you are not interested in negative criticism than you are setting yourself up to a very big failure, a person who offers criticism both negative and positive is WAY more valuable than the person who only ever offers positive criticism. to many games have blocked/censored/removed negative feedback only to find that when the game went live all that negative feedback should have been listened to
Dasilva said:
Khayos said:
You say in the poll yes let our fellow supporters join us, but that isn't what will happen. Yes some of the free accounts will be supporters. The vast majority are going to be trolls and jerks from across the internet. I feel it is a poor decision to allow free folks in, because there are way too many trolls, even though there are a good handful nice free supporters.
The vast majority of free accounts will be looking to bash Brad, and this project. We don't need that kind of negativity. We need Positivity, and constructive criticism ONLY.
the area in bold and italics is the key I am going to respond to here, if you are ONLY looking to have constructive criticism and you are not interested in negative criticism than you are setting yourself up to a very big failure, a person who offers criticism both negative and positive is WAY more valuable than the person who only ever offers positive criticism. to many games have blocked/censored/removed negative feedback only to find that when the game went live all that negative feedback should have been listened to
Constructive criticism can be negative feedback. I can say this feature should be removed. Here are my reasons why. (that is an example of constructive criticism.)
Negativity is Bashing people and the game, or features in the game. Ex: This feature sucks and should be removed because it sucks.
Understand the difference?
Dasilva said:
Khayos said:
You say in the poll yes let our fellow supporters join us, but that isn't what will happen. Yes some of the free accounts will be supporters. The vast majority are going to be trolls and jerks from across the internet. I feel it is a poor decision to allow free folks in, because there are way too many trolls, even though there are a good handful nice free supporters.
The vast majority of free accounts will be looking to bash Brad, and this project. We don't need that kind of negativity. We need Positivity, and constructive criticism ONLY.
the area in bold and italics is the key I am going to respond to here, if you are ONLY looking to have constructive criticism and you are not interested in negative criticism than you are setting yourself up to a very big failure, a person who offers criticism both negative and positive is WAY more valuable than the person who only ever offers positive criticism. to many games have blocked/censored/removed negative feedback only to find that when the game went live all that negative feedback should have been listened to
Not really sure I agree. If I'm painting a bowl of fruit, and I ask you "Do you think I got the color of the orange right?" What I'm looking for is for you to tell me (constructively) that it's too orange, not enough orange, just the right orange, etc...
What I'm not looking for you to do is say: "Having an orange there is just STUPID to begin with. Get rid of the orange entirely. Nobody likes oranges anyway!"
Especially if the person the painting is being made for has said "boy, I love oranges. I'd really like to see oranges in the painting"
It's a really crappy analogy, but it accurately represents what folks mean here when they say they don't want negative criticism. What's really being said is we (as a community) aren't interested in waging wars over how stupid we are because we are idiotic enough to like old school mechanics... because you know - only absolutely moronic people with drool running down their chins believe such a game has a chance to survive.
I don't think the vast majority of folks who haven't paid will be trolls and jerks.... but I do believe that one or two trolls and jerks can poison an entire forum community.
Just go back and look at the forums we were using during the kickstarter... There was one poster in particular that comes to mind. If I see that poster show up if free folks are let in - I'll be raising lots of red flags.
Wandidar said:
I don't think the vast majority of folks who haven't paid will be trolls and jerks.... but I do believe that one or two trolls and jerks can poison an entire forum community.
Just go back and look at the forums we were using during the kickstarter... There was one poster in particular that comes to mind. If I see that poster show up if free folks are let in - I'll be raising lots of red flags.
You may be right, but I am not too trusting of the Internet at large. I mean Everywhere I go people come out of the woodwork to bash Brad and this game any time it is featured.
To open the doors of your own home base, allowing that to happen here, is folly in my opinion.
People can go anywhere on the internet that Pantheon is talked about and voice their opinions whether good, bad, neutral, or troll.
This is supposed to be the one place for this game, that the things that are said are solely for its success and betterment. That would be utterly destroyed letting all the trolls in.
Khayos said:
Wandidar said:
I don't think the vast majority of folks who haven't paid will be trolls and jerks.... but I do believe that one or two trolls and jerks can poison an entire forum community.
Just go back and look at the forums we were using during the kickstarter... There was one poster in particular that comes to mind. If I see that poster show up if free folks are let in - I'll be raising lots of red flags.
You may be right, but I am not too trusting of the Internet at large. I mean Everywhere I go people come out of the woodwork to bash Brad and this game any time it is featured.
To open the doors of your own home base, allowing that to happen here, is folly in my opinion.
People can go anywhere on the internet that Pantheon is talked about and voice their opinions whether good, bad, neutral, or troll.
This is supposed to be the one place for this game, that the things that are said are solely for its success and betterment. That would be utterly destroyed letting all the trolls in.
To your point: As I recall, when it was announced that the forums here would be pay - it wasn't supporters of the game decrying the decision - it was the folks who were bashing it. There was a decided opinion expressed by a couple of them that if voices like theirs weren't present, the game (ironically the game they had already declared failed) was doomed.
The trial idea is good in theory but bad in practice.
I think that something very dramatic would have to happen in order to reverse the decision. Otherwise (too) many innocents would be "punished" because of the potential wrongdoers.
So I think the opening of forums will be irreversible regardless whether a trial is mentionned or not.
As I am rather optimistic in nature, I don't expect more than 10% of trolls and that can be managed with a hammer.
That leaves 90% of normal more or less interested visitors what is enough to :
a) enhance the community with new blood (we are all here rather EQ and/or VG biased)
b) increase the probability that there would appear some signal in the noise
c) convince part of those newcomers to join the supporting part of the community.
So for me the positive outweighs the negative and I will be among those who will greet the first newbs.
I have one question, has the issue of forum access been fixed ?
I was able to access the Dev journals section which by the wiki i should not be able to ( still can by the way ) if we are going to allow free accounts to post ( which i am in favor of ) we need to ensure the Access issues is fixed.
Besides the more people in here the more people i can take the piss out of ;)
Dasilva said:Khayos said:
You say in the poll yes let our fellow supporters join us, but that isn't what will happen. Yes some of the free accounts will be supporters. The vast majority are going to be trolls and jerks from across the internet. I feel it is a poor decision to allow free folks in, because there are way too many trolls, even though there are a good handful nice free supporters.
The vast majority of free accounts will be looking to bash Brad, and this project. We don't need that kind of negativity. We need Positivity, and constructive criticism ONLY.
the area in bold and italics is the key I am going to respond to here, if you are ONLY looking to have constructive criticism and you are not interested in negative criticism than you are setting yourself up to a very big failure, a person who offers criticism both negative and positive is WAY more valuable than the person who only ever offers positive criticism. to many games have blocked/censored/removed negative feedback only to find that when the game went live all that negative feedback should have been listened to
Anasyn said:
Ok it already kinda sounds like the team has made up their mind. This reminds me of other games currently not released yet who tried to get the community to vote on things and then do what they wanted to begin with.
The people who are backing this game don't need to compete with non-backers on every topic that is brought up. Keep a separate general forum that is open to anybody to post things in. you can even have the moderators mirror good topic discussion and post them for debate in the open general forum.
I understand you want more people on the site but don't do it at the cost of those who have been around since kickstarter and have donated hundreds of dollars.
Anasyn, nothing has been decided on by the team, I literally threw an idea I had at Chris and said I have always wanted to open it up again and moderate it to allow more members in and I said I wanted to test the waters first by creating a poll and letting the community have their say, he said great idea and agreed the poll would get a better feel for what the community wanted and said go for it.
If you guys vote No, keep it members only, then that is what we would do. If you vote yes, then we will change it. Simple as that mate.
You have to remember, VG didn't have any restrictions and those forums were fine, there was the odd discussion that got out of control but then was moderated and the fire put out. Any Blue name that stepped outside of the forum guidelines would be monitored closely then acted on.
These are development forums, not your normal fan forums, so we want as much feedback as we can get while building Pantheon and we are asking the community to have their say on this.
This won't affect your money or your Apprentice Developer/VIP forums, they stay locked to Orange/Purple.
There are a lot of supporters out there just like you that far outweigh the trolls who want to have their say and can't afford too for whatever reason, we want to capture those supporters and include them in a portion of our discussions in the general area.
Zandil said:
I have one question, has the issue of forum access been fixed ?
I was able to access the Dev journals section which by the wiki i should not be able to ( still can by the way ) if we are going to allow free accounts to post ( which i am in favor of ) we need to ensure the Access issues is fixed.
Besides the more people in here the more people i can take the piss out of ;)
We are looking into this now mate, thanks for the heads up.
I don't think they should have access to general forums, but their own "Visitors Forums"...
Non-paying members, should not be riding on the coattails of paying members, or their forums. Separate space for them to converse is a great idea though. Just not in general conversations pertaining to core circumstances we paying members are defining/discussing.
Hieromonk said:
I don't think they should have access to general forums, but their own "Visitors Forums"...
Non-paying members, should not be riding on the coattails of paying members, or their forums. Separate space for them to converse is a great idea though. Just not in general conversations pertaining to core circumstances we paying members are defining/discussing.
This is a misconception mate.
No one is riding anyones "coat tails" the Apprentice Developers have their own sub forum for being orange name subscribers and that will not change. The VIP members have their own sub forum and that will not change, we are just wanting to give a bit more access to more people but the choice is completey up to the community.
Vote no and if the majority vote is no at the end, then we won;t change anything.
Haven't posted in a while as I've been pretty busy. However, I still monitor and creep around reading all the content updates! Keep em coming. As I see it, you want to bring the largest crowd to check it out, but fully advise them as to what type of game you are trying to make. I am not at all saying that you haven't been explicit about this in the past, but a lot of times the gaming public's attention span can be rather..... short. In other words, if the forum is open to the general public the conversation needs to be driven by the game makers. This will prevent stagnation and allow the conversation to stay on point. That, I think, may help alleviate all of the problems everyone is concerned about. I just think bringing the masses in needs to be buttressed with enough "stuff" to talk about and "chew on" that everyone doesn't just go back to the past.
With that being said, I am always a fan of bringing in as many people as possible to learn about the game that you are trying to make. However, the design of the game needs to be remembered and the conversation needs to be steered to assisting making that game - you need to keep it away the conversation that every individual person wants to play. I understand that there is only so much you can do to on this end, but just making a concerted effort will go a long way to slowly regaining the trust of the community at large.
One last point here. If something in the game isn't up for discussion do not open it up for discussion. Just make it that way and move on. That's much better than soliciting opinions and making people feel like it never really mattered to begin with.
Still here rooting for this game to be the MMO that brings it back!
Brunt said:
Still here rooting for this game to be the MMO that brings it back!
Is it bringing Sexy back ?
I really don't think they should have full access I think general, off topic should be granted that is more than enough to get them involved. Possibly get them to pay to get more too. I understand we want more people and ideas, but we have no money and they can bring up concerns and ideas there.
Can we open it up, there needs to be those who want to play the game, to have some say, while not supporters, I feel the more ideals bouncing off of players who will play the game hopefully will be a much better gauge than just those with some extra coin in their pockets to play for the games development.
Also can we setup the forums a bit differently (example http://forums.digitalpeleton.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=14 ) Use something like this under the Development Discussion section....
While is this not a complete list in any stretch, it will help break down posts in to the right areas of discussion.