Death and Taxes...

[shadow2kx]

One of my concerns is that the people on the forums are not the bulk of people in the game.
Lots of people in the game, login, play, have fun, logout, live their lives, come back again later.
Only a small percent actually make it the forums. And we also have a lot of people in the forums who never play the game.
This imbalance makes communication here biased in a way that is not easy to correct for.

This is 100% accurate.

SOE devs told us the same thing back in the day. Quiet people are happy people.

Regardless, I don't know what good a QA session would do. If people want to ask questions, the staff here does answer. The tone of some of those answers may sometimes be an issue, but that's entirely different than them not being available to us to talk to.

[Surrena]

I'm generally supportive of open communication between staff and community.



All this said as you may have noticed I've been trying to carve out more time for the community. All of us on staff know its important, however it is incredibly time consuming and challenging.

Perhaps we could start with the community voting on a couple questions (NOT IN THIS THREAD) and we can try to have a thoughtful answer to the top couple of questions on a weekly basis.



(P.S. If you try to get Q&A questions started on this tread I'll ask the mods to delete your post)

What if we had list of questions sent to you in advance and mobyus could do a podcast of some sort on his stream or youtube video.

[Valkyra]

One of my concerns is that the people on the forums are not the bulk of people in the game.
Lots of people in the game, login, play, have fun, logout, live their lives, come back again later.
Only a small percent actually make it the forums. And we also have a lot of people in the forums who never play the game.
This imbalance makes communication here biased in a way that is not easy to correct for.

All this said as you may have noticed I've been trying to carve out more time for the community. All of us on staff know its important, however it is incredibly time consuming and challenging.

Perhaps we could start with the community voting on a couple questions (NOT IN THIS THREAD) and we can try to have a thoughtful answer to the top couple of questions on a weekly basis.

That's true, it does seem that individuals whom are more 'vocal' on the forum don't make up the entirety of the population playing/testing on SWGEmu servers... Even though there's a requirement to read forum threads before proceeding, someone can create an account and not even use the forums before logging in.

I think account creation/management systems definitely need a revamp since cRush initially wrote them, but of course just more work to detract from the end goal of a 14.1 SWG emulation. I know it's a lot to consider in all points fully, but Bas has been up for many years now, but it's kind of a decision on revamping registration processes to make things more uniform/concise with the user experience, or focus all efforts into making 1.0. Perhaps some sort of systems could be brainstormed on how to keep players more engaged with the forums and ask for their opinions on things. I feel like there's some kind of correlation between players that are swayed away from wanting to playtest on SWGEmu servers and what could be done about account management, such as further systems to help prevent multiple accounts, but that's another issue for another time.

I do want to say I appreciate all the outside answers you and other SWGEmu team members give on a constant basis about advanced questions on what you all have learned, such as compiling opinions. I think a rift between dev/team members of a project and a community, in a scope similar to what SWGEmu does is detrimental to the project as a whole, but of course you can only do so much for a community on what each member has on their plate inside and outside of SWG-related matters.

I feel that a weekly basis Q&A could be ideal, but maybe make it monthly instead, and pick & chose a few questions a team member could issue a response to in a monthly update based off questions submitted/screened due to time restraints (instead of weekly as suggested.)

[Misk Brebran]

I feel that a weekly basis Q&A could be ideal, but maybe make it monthly instead, and pick & chose a few questions a team member could issue a response to in a monthly update based off questions submitted/screened due to time restraints (instead of weekly as suggested.)

This ^^^^^ sounds like a great idea, at least to me it does. One team member a month (weekly seems like alot of work) interviewed by Mobyus (if hes willing and can coord times) or just self videoed by the team member answering several community posted questions they want to address. Maybe have a question thread dedicated strictly to this process. It would cover several bases at once, i.e. allowing us to get to know the team (and vice versa), using community posted questions (Emu or otherwise), posting the session in a dedicated thread for the interviews/sessions (no additional comments for the thread).

Something like this doesnt seem like it would be taking alot of time away from the proj and the time it does take away I think is worth it. The interview/video could be scheduled in advanced, it doesnt have to be coordinated with several ppl at one time and the team member answering the questions can take as long as they like. Maybe every so often Mobyus could do the interview like thing for an extended session...idk, but i do like the idea of getting the know the team better and not just concerning the Emu, but other things that goes on in their lives as well. Maybe a tester could have an interview some time to turn the tables a bit. Nothing wrong with that either and lets the community AND the team get to know each other a little better as well.

I know not everyone uses the forums, just throw out a system wide msg, email or maybe even a statement linked to the launcher stating when the next vid will be posted. Then at least everyone has the opportunity to look if they so desire. I bet if more ppl knew what the forums were for, more ppl would come look.

:::steps down from mic and podium, deposits two cents in piggybank on side of stage and slowly moves away keeping an eye on the crowd:::

Cheers!

[Surrena]

It was nee who reported you to magyar tax gestapo.

Also anyone notice that vladas post went from 32k to 52k in matter of days? He must be god at posting!

[Vlada]

I actually used to irritate the devs about that very thing quite a lot back when i was on-staff.

I think both you and they will have to agree that you irritated them about many other things as well.

Also anyone notice that vladas post went from 32k to 52k in matter of days? He must be god at posting!

I think i know what it is, posts that shouldn't count towards post count are showing up now because i was messing with some settings, ill see if i can fix it today.

EDIT: Should be fixed now. Thanks for letting me know.

[nee2earth]

Perhaps we could start with the community voting on a couple questions (NOT IN THIS THREAD) and we can try to have a thoughtful answer to the top couple of questions on a weekly basis.

That'd be a great new thing that should only take a few minutes of your time each week.

Actually, we tried that already...
https://www.swgemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=183748
...and it didn't seem to go as planned.

Probably for reasons i listed in my other post in this thread, which LK's subsequent post seemed to reiterate.

That said, more communication (and less 'Nee' ) typically is a good thing; depending upon the listener(s) .

----

I think both you and they will have to agree that you irritated them about many other things as well.

.

Everything was born out of a sheer desire to help, but I'd say the feeling was often mutual.

None of that stuff matters now though, at least not to me anyway. What matters is: Our community rallied yet again and donations are GREEN.

See ya next month---err, year.

[Kurgol]

Don't feel bad, you guys do an amazing job for volunteers. I have donated as much as I can afford, I'm sure you guys will be back in the black soon =)

[Mauriac]

I quite honestly don't understand what questions people want/need answered. The biggest ones either don't have answers by their very nature or have very clearly laid out answers from what I've understood.

To me it seems a Q&A would only help those who aren't savvy enough to read the MANY stickied threads that contain all of the project specifications and status updates. Is this something needed? Am I missing something here?

In the end I am just happy that this project is still running at all and from the looks of things will reach completion. Hi 5's all around for that.

[Mobyus1]

I quite honestly don't understand what questions people want/need answered. The biggest ones either don't have answers by their very nature or have very clearly laid out answers from what I've understood.

To me it seems a Q&A would only help those who aren't savvy enough to read the MANY stickied threads that contain all of the project specifications and status updates. Is this something needed? Am I missing something here?

In the end I am just happy that this project is still running at all and from the looks of things will reach completion. Hi 5's all around for that.

I can only speak for myself, but I'd get one very important thing out of it... a sense for who the staff are as people. I wouldn't mind having the opportunity to ask a handful of them a couple of questions that we all already know the answers to just to hear them actually respond verbally as opposed to reading it via text on a forum. It would make them more personable and, hopefully, likable (not that we don't like them already). Text is too easy to incorrectly add tone to, so actually hearing it straight from their mouths would give us a better look at how passionate they are about this labor of love.

...but that's just me.

[zimbab]

I do have 1 question that I wanna ask... but I will not and not in this thread

Just gonna say keep up the good work team we are still behind you

[Qui-larek]

As long as you keep coding we will keep donating

Its that simple and at the end of this part of the journey we can all have a nice cup of tea

[ottor]

Hey there,
I do not post very often on forums but i read it everyday (or almost) you give me here the occasion to thank all the staff for the amazing great job done over the years and to say that everybody can make mistakes (and the real mistake is the tax itself...).
I'll be glad to help thanks again and happy holidays from France guys !

[LordSniper]

there's no way to know every country's tax code

thank you guys for all the hard work and dedication !! happy holidays!

[Lolindir]

This thing have not yet been discussed in staff, but I don't think we should start to expect members of the community or team to be willing to have their face on video or to talk about things in their life outside of SWGEmu. If they want to, that's fine, if they don't want to, that have to be fine to. Having your words in a forum post is one thing, having your face out over social media, is another. Different people, different boundaries.

I'm posting this just to make sure we don't make an expectation that people, who contribute for various reasons, needs to be on video, or have their voice heard. We wish that anyone who wants the be anonymous can be just that. That is why we have the 2.4 rule in our TOS. As soon as you say yes to something like this, that anonymous is gone.

I'm not negative to the concept, but we have to respect peoples boundaries, if they voice one.