Shall Anet open GW2 to the community via democratisation?

[Zahr Dalsk]

Originally Posted by Malice Black

A game ruled by people who dwell in a basement. No thanks.

Well, that's already the people ArenaNet is favouring, for the most part (not that it was always this way) so not much change there

[SerenitySilverstar]

The customer isn't always right, so no.

[yum]

Democracy in a supposed to be competitive game?

Are you mad?

[Snow Bunny]

I can think of 4 people I would trust with this community, myself being one of them.

This is a terrible idea. Most players are idiots (it's true, it's unfair, it's mean, but who cares) and thus idiots would elect idiots to the office.

[trialist]

9 players able to influence the course of a game, with a limited time frame of 6 months, is like a recipe for disaster. You would need 9 individuals who are totally unbiased and do not have agendas of their own, which is highly unlikely to happen. And if the community elected the wrong 9 peeps, it will be a long 6 months to suffer through, during which time, crap ideas may get implemented as "what the players want", and the game goes down the crapper.

If anet really wants the voice of the players and not the voice of players who bother to visit fansite forums, well, why not go and get it then? What do i mean by this? Simple. Implement a suggestion box ingame. How and what form it takes is up to the devs but my idea is probably a suggestions window that pops up when one does /suggest. Let it function like a forum post complete with title and space for posting your suggestion. Add in an autosort filter for the suggestion titles along with post count of sorted suggestions, sorted highest posts first, add a search functionality for the devs only, to search through suggestions and you are golden. Also when a player either logs on or off (whichever the player desires), a popup could appear that asks whether the player would like to make a suggestion and if he says yes, the suggestion window would popup.

This way the devs have a suggestion box that really is the voice of the people, (well those that bother to suggest anyway heh) and is autosorted based on titles. The devs could take a peep at their suggestion box and see that they have 200 posts sorted by "auction house", for example, and decide to read the suggestions in that category and since it is the suggestion with the most number of posts, it can be taken to mean it is the most popular and wanted. Of course whether or not any suggestion is good for the game would still be up to the devs to decide, but it would really be the voice of the players and not that of a small subset of players who bother to visit forums and post. This is just a rather crude form of how it could work in-game, i'm sure someone else could probably come up with something more elegant, but i feel this is better than leaving your fate in the hands of 9 questionable players.

[Nevin]

Put me in the lead Director's seat at Arena Net. Then everyone will get what they want... For a price.

[-Sonata-]

Sorry, but I'd much prefer that politics stays out of Guild Wars. In the end all it would do is create more channels to go through and a virtual bureaucracy that has no business being inside this game. Giving players a position of "power", of any sorts, in representation form to influence decisions would lead to disaster.

On a side note - I don't require representation either, nor would I trust another player to properly represent me. If I have an issue that needs to be resolved there are already proper channels in place I can use and have used already with ease in the past.

There are plenty of games out there in which no communication exists. Bugs are never fixed, issues are never addressed, events are never held, and illegal activities burn like forest fires.

Flip that coin and you have games in which the "powers that be" are TOO involved in the community. So much that some players use their friendships with GM's/Devs to manipulate other players, threaten other players, and abuse. GM's also, because they've gotten too involved, play favorites with players, which is equally a bad practice.

As I see it in Guild Wars, we have a happy medium. We know our Devs are watching, we have the ability to talk with them and reps, we know they adjust and address our major concerns. At the same time, they know when its best to stay in the shadows and not become too involved in direct communication as too avoid any heavy influence by the players.


If Guild Wars was, and operated like a virtual world society such as Kaneva, Second Life, or even the old day VRML Cybertown; A place where the creators allowed the citizens to dictate the development of the city- it would make much more sense, but that's not the case.

So I have to say no on any form of Elected Officials to represent us. I have no need, nor any desire for a body to act as my voice. I really have no idea at all why EVE feels the need to pull this stunt, but I don't play EVE so I won't comment. It's just seems an unnecessary measure in an environment that is not developed by the players and because it's not a Virtual Society it should never be developed or heavily influenced by the players in any fashion.

[samifly]

there are very very few people i would trust with this game.

[tmakinen]

This is just a question of how the voice of the player base can be heard by the devs. There are fundamental issues that should be considered first. Unlike people, opinions are not created equal as can be seen by observing any non-trivial discussion on these fora. Take, e.g., the recent shout-out concerning Loot Scaling and whether it should be removed or not. People without the dimmest idea of what LS is and is not chimed in and voiced their opinion, the less informed the louder. There is a signal out there but it's getting drowned in the noise, and the purpose of any player elected body is to filter out that noise and forward the actual signal to the developers. However, this is not an easy task because those who filter shouldn't let their own opinions affect the outcome at the risk of biasing the signal. Could it work? I remain very doubtful.

Instead of a top level filtering body, a grassroots approach might work better. Let's say that there is a 'great council' of players with their own discussion forum, and every in-game alliance is allowed to have one representative, or ambassador, in that council (alliance age and size restrictions apply to prevent astroturfing). The ambassador of the alliance must be at least moderately informed about issues to be able to adequately represent the point of view of his/her alliance, and thus most of the noise is being cut out on the alliance level. The council can then elect a spokesperson from among themselves who will present a concise, well digested summary of council discussions to the developers. The spokesperson does not filter, just edit, and that is a much easier task. The whole process can be implemented with enough transparency so that every player can make sure that their point of view is adequately taken into account. (I'm not making this up as I go, what I describe is basically a republic.)

[Dr Strangelove]

The CRs essentially already do what a good elected representative would do. Yes, we could certainly do better if we had someone like Ensign in charge of skill balance, but we could also do several orders of magnitude worse.

Players happy with the game would not vote or become involved in the process at all, loud players with a chip on their shoulder would be making all the changes. Do we really want a bunch of angry idiots in charge of our game?

[aspectacle]

Hellgate London has also implemented a community driven feedback scheme.

Flagship recently "employed" (in quotes because they aren't paid) community members as part of a "team advocate program" to report on specific areas of the game. So a rep for each of PvP, PvE, Items, UI, Guilds, a rep for each of the character classes. These people are tasked with focusing on the issues of their field, thoroughly understanding them, evaluating/testing them and summarising those issues into a regular report for those who care and can actually do something about it - and then maybe even alpha testing the results. It seems that these people basically had to pass a job interview and fall over in worship of the game to be selected for the task.

Basically they have community members doing parts of what (I imagine) Gaile and Andrew do, and more... but for gratis. I'd post a linky but you need HGL official forums access.

Otherwise - please no voting and no politics in my community representation. I think the ArenaNet employing people for the task is a great way to avoid both.

[Tijger]

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

All argumented opinion is welcome! (if a mod would like to create a poll for this discussion, I'd suggest as a question "Would you like more democratisation in the GW fans-Anet relationship and if so, what shape shall it take?" with answers like "No", "Yes as a globally-elected council", "Yes as a fansite-elected council", "Yes (other)", "May be, I don't know")

Please, PLEASE, god no.

I'm playing a game for fun, not to get involved in politics and especially online politics seem to bring the worst out in people.
Second, to please the voters the devs will need to keep bringing out content which will very likely conflict with GW financial model.

[BlackSephir]

Democracy is stupid. Tyrany with the iron fist and the heart of gold is the way to go!

[Fril Estelin]

Thanks every1 for the nice contributions. Before I respond to each posts (after all I'm the one who initiated this thread, my responsibility to make it live ... or leave!), I'd like to throw in a few more ideas, trying to push the edge of what we envisage. Remember this is an open discussion, I'm not furthering any of my personal interest, or trying to get an advantage.

Oh and one last time before people mention the "I don't want to give power to a bunch of players" argument: the elected council has no effective power, it's only one additional "node" added to the range of communication channels but one that will be in direct contact with Anet.

note: I like tmakinen's name of "ambassador", it better suits the description and highlights that it's not a real "democracy".

What if this "Great Council of GW players (GCGWP)" would abide by certain representativty rules, such as (these are merely ideas without very specific numbers or boundaries, feel free to modify them, rather than simply criticise them):
1) each major fanforum (i.e. "elite GW site" in Anet terminology, there are 9 of them) and the GWiki shall have exactly one GCGWP representative (no person shall be elected for 2 fanforums);
2) each elected CGWP member has to choose a "Pv side", i.e. PvE or PvP (of course he needs to be able to prove he's active on his side and will be removed from GCGWP if he's lied), and the GCGWP shall have about half of each;
3) the GCGWP shall not have a majority (more thant 2/3rd) of: veteran players (3 years of GW), hardcore players (2000h of play? GWAMM? rank9 glad?), young/old players
4) the 10 "top GW guilds" in PvP can elect a representative (may be use the RAWR cup too?); the 10 biggest and most active PvE guilds (or Alliances?) can elect a representative
5) there shall be a code of conduct for GCGWP members, any breach means you are removed from the GCGWP and become uneligible for 2 years;
6) GCGWP members are elected for 6 months and can't be elected more thant 2 times (as for EVE, there shall be a list of alternate members).

May be 1) can be complemented with 1 or 2 elected member for the 16 Honoured and Specialty GW fansites and 2 representatives (instead of 1) of GWiki? (I'd also suggest that fansite admins cannot be on the GCGWP) And 2) with a "PvE and PvP" status with a certain number of seats? In 3) I wonder whether more representative quotas could be established if Anet asked people questions via the game interface (a very simple "check the option that match your style of playing Guild Wars" screen that is displayed only once)?

Yes I know, it's imperfect and probably full of flaws. And I haven't yet discussed the tasks and responsibilities of the CGWP, but I think it's not yet the time to do so in this thread. At the same time, I proposed these rules (which would make a council of around 15 players?) to try to provoke (not too harshly I hope) a discussion and gather opinions. May be people have similar ideas or can correct my mistake? Or debunk this idea?

I hope that the truth lies at the intersection of perspectives and opinions (and I'm trying to open a debate rather than making a point, just imagine yourself in toga in the MMO equivalent of the Ancient Agora of Athens 25 centuries ago!).

[Malice Black]

It's a bad idea no matter how you put it.

It'll work for EVE, mainly because EVE is a player dominated game.

[Fril Estelin]

One last thought: PLEASE PLEASE leave aside the "politics" aspect for the moment. I promise that we'll talk about it, once the initial discussion has come to more fruits, but if we start with the "prejudices" before we even discussed the meat of this "Great Council of GW Players (GCGWP)", we're doomed to fail this thread and the idea of representativity.

So please, forget this for a few pages, we'll go back to that (because it is inevitable). Just imagine that this is an idea we can shape in any way we can, it's like a blank sheet of paper where we can write our brainstorming ideas. Let us not be limited by concepts from the real-world, at least not for the moment, we're free to event create a new form of representativity.

[Fril Estelin]

Originally Posted by Malice Black

It's a bad idea no matter how you put it.

It'll work for EVE, mainly because EVE is a player dominated game.

I'm convinced you're able to do more than one-liners. If you're not willing, I suggest you stay out of this, your point was made clear by your 2 messages.

[Gun Pierson]

We have the dev team (they live somewhere on Mars I think) and we have the playerbase. We had one real person who tried to fill the gap, but she's leaving to play another role at Anet (burned out), aka Gaile.

Blizzard always had their own forums (starcraft, warcraft, wow etc.) with several employees posting stuff. That's what we need imo, more Anet peeps on the forums who discuss things with us.

A council will only be another link, we need direct contact.

[tmakinen]

I think that Fril is working on an important issue here. Designers and developers don't design and develop in vacuum, both positive and negative feedback from the user base (players) is important. The problem is, as has been mentioned, the signal to noise ratio. How can we gather and forward the good (both positive and negative) feedback (the signal) and put a damper on the uninformed, shortsighted or plain old malicious feedback (the noise)? Who is content with the current situation and how the feedback has been affecting the game so far? Can we device ways to do it better?

Please make constructive comments instead of naysaying. I doubt that ANet has the resources to organize anything more than what there is now. It is in the interest of us, the players, to speak with a clear and informed voice to the devs, and anything should be better than the default rowdy mob approach. Don't be so afraid of politics, it is after all taking care of common interests. That the process has been subverted in the real world by unscrupulous SOBs catering to the interests of the privileged few at the expense of everybody else doesn't mean that it must happen in a virtual world as well. For starters, in a virtual economy you don't have to sell your soul to multinational corporations to fund your campaign, and if you do bad decisions it's much easier for people to vote with their feet.

[Fril Estelin]

Thanks tmakinen. I think that such a council would actually improve the communication both ways: from Anet's point of view, it's a clearer path to the community to gather and circulate information, but (I hope) not an exclusive one; from our point of view, we get a more direct link and (this is one aim of such council) a more focused feedback that does not hamper Anet's work of implementing the game. In essence, it amounts to breaking Gaile and Andrew's into smaller ones, but in the hands of the players (so it's free for Anet). We would be able to know which Sardelac suggestions have been implemented, some of the factors that influenced such and such decision (of course, council members would be under strict NDAs and Anet would sue anyone using this representation against their rules and interests).

When I thought more about this idea, I realised that this is a direct extension of the "community day" that Anet very successfully organised. Do you remember how cool Billiard's articles were and the feeling that they gave to us, players? At the moment, the dialogue with Anet is a cacophony, and GWG illustrates this perfectly (I'll put aside the trolls, such as the 117 or other dupers) with so many discussions derailing because of this opinion-hammering, PvE-PvP exclusivity, pro-or-against stance. No one is really trying to lower the signal-to-noise ratio because "it's just a game" (if it was, why these hyper-active forums, weekly updates, grind and anger?)

Remember, again, that there are lots of possibilities, because we're not bound to what we know, but can devise a new body that fits our needs. Some say the wiki does that well enough, some say it's not possible. I'm saying: let's try and discuss it.

At the moment I'm putting aside 2 aspects which are directly related: the politics and the trust issue.