COMMUNITY THINK TANK

[Ambedrake]

Hello and welcome. NightSong Entertainment will be holding an organized Think Tank to help hash out ideas and refine them from our community. So get your thinking caps out, things you want to see added, things you want removed, things you want changed, or things that just straight out need balanced! The structur on how this Think Tank will work is below so read carefully.



Idea submissions

Please have all idea submissions sent to the below email address no later then the final date. Please be as descriptive as you possibly can we will be adding this to a voting list and we want your idea to be clear to all those who are going to read it! If you want to remain annonamous with the idea, please also state so in the submission.

Submit to : [email protected]

Cut Off Date : 26th of May



Voting

We will be compiling the ideas submitted into a voting system. From here we will post the link of the survey, and each and ever particiapent will have the opportunity to go in and decide what ideas they are for, what ones they are against, or what ones you are neutral or don't know enough information about.

Voting Dates : May 29th - June 3rd



Discussion

Once the ideas are submitted and voted on, we will be removing the ones that get no positive or have completely negative votes. After this filtering we will be assigning a time block for each idea to be discussed both in a voice communication system AND in a text chat. Both of these will be set up before hand so that moderation roles can be put in place to keep all discussion on topic.

During this discussion there WILL BE MODERATORS! So I urge you to please stay on topic, stay respectful, and be constructive. Each of the idea's will have someone writing refinement notes on them as they are brought up.

Date of Discussions : June 7th & June 8th



Re-Voting

Once is all said and done, we will take the ideas as they are refined from the discussion, re write them in a voting poll again. From here we will allow 3 days of voting on the refined ideas with whether players support or dislike the ideas at hand. Once this voting closes the results WITH the support votes will be sent directly to Schema and Beetle Bear so that they can look it over and see what YOU the users want!

Dates to Revote : June 13th - June 15th







Cheers guys, and let make this work!

~Ambe

 

[Ambedrake]

1) Hosting it off the website is a must, the current website does not have the requirements to moderate such an event.

2) This is organized by community members not by schema. If schema or BB want to participate, then we welcome them to, but this was an idea brought up by, organized by, and will be executed by, community members.

3) Your opposition is noted and you do not have to participate at all, but for those who want to participate this will continue in its current structure period.

 

[Present_containing]

?T?h?e? ?f?o?r?u?m?\'?s? ?p?o?s?t? ?f?i?e?l?d? ?h?a?s? ?a? ?b?u?i?l?t? ?i?n? ?s?p?e?l?l? ?c?h?e?c?k? ?t?o?o?l?.?


?I? ?d?o? ?n?o?t? ?t?h?i?n?k? ?a? ?t?h?i?r?d? ?p?a?r?t?y? ?h?o?s?t?i?n?g? ?s?u?c?h? ?a?n? ?e?v?e?n?t? ?i?s? ?f?a?v?o?r?a?b?l?e?,? ?p?e?r?h?a?p?s? ?o?r?g?a?n?i?z?i?n?g? ?f?o?r? ?s?c?h?e?m?a?,? ?b?u?t? ?n?o?t? ?h?o?s?t?i?n?g?.?



?H?a?s? ?s?c?h?e?m?a? ?m?a?d?e? ?a?n? ?o?f?f?i?c?i?a?l? ?a?n?n?o?u?n?c?e?m?e?n?t??? ?T?h?a?t? ?w?o?u?l?d? ?b?e? ?m?o?r?e? ?a?d?v?a?n?t?a?g?e?o?u?s? ?t?h?a?n? ?p?o?s?t?i?n?g? ?i?t? ?t?o? ?t?h?e? ?f?o?r?u?m?s? ?e?x?c?l?u?s?i?v?e?l?y?.? ?S?c?h?e?m?a? ?s?h?o?u?l?d? ?p?o?s?t? ?a? ?n?e?w?s? ?a?n?n?o?u?n?c?e?m?e?n?t? ?a?b?o?u?t? ?i?t? ?t?o? ?l?e?t? ?p?l?a?y?e?r?s? ?k?n?o?w? ?a?b?o?u?t? ?i?t? ?i?f? ?i?t? ?i?s? ?o?f?f?i?c?i?a?l?.?


Scratch that, i\'m just going to say that i think this should not happen and i fully oppose it.

 

[Travbro]

Not only does the forum have a built-in spell check, but your browser does as well, unless it\'s Plebian Explorer 9 (or older).

It\'s a terrible idea. This is schema\'s fucking game, let him do what he wants. Stop pushing the poor bastard around. He\'s a competent game designer and can work things out on his own. Ever hear of Dwarf Fortress? Only reason that people know about it is that the dev follows his own vision, and nobody else\'s.

If you have ideas, post them in the suggestions forum. No need to create meetings and thinktanks and bullshit. We have a suggestions forum for a reason, so people can post ideas and discuss them. That\'s plenty. We don\'t need a thinktank composed of the self-titled elite players and attention whores demanding schema\'s attention, especially when schema needs to make the game work properly more than anything else.

 

[Present_containing]

Then do not market it as if it were official.

 

[Ambedrake]

No where in the post does it say in the post \"Official\" at all. And it specifically says that NightSong Entertainment is the ones hosting it, not starmade, so your argument seems flawed in this aspect.

 

[Present_containing]

So then, these ideas are for your server, not schema?

You should not claim to represent him without official endorsement.

Even if you backpedal and say that you don\'t claim to represent him, then this whole affair is without merit. People should be able to submit their ideas to schema, through proper official channels which he establishes, rather than an unofficial get together where things are voted on by those community members who choose to attend.

Open discourse on official forums or other methods of submission is the proper way to contribute ideas to a developer, not appointing yourself the leader and asking people to go through you to the developers.

 

[Ambedrake]

The idea of a think tank, is to refine idea\'s in a group. I have not back pedaled in any way. And yes we will be presenting these to Schema and BB, as well as posting the refined idea\'s in the forums. A think tank is not just a \"Throw some idea here\" thing, it is to take idea\'s that are thought of and refine them to a more usable format as well as combine thouse that would work together well.

Think Tanks are used in many communitys both open and closed source for a long time. If people wish to provide ideas themselves in other venues that\'s fine, this is just an event to help refine the idea\'s so they are well thought out before they get presented so that the pro\'s and cons as well as ways to counteract the issues that could be involved are set up making less work for a developer when they like an idea that has been presented.

 

[Travbro]

You are aware that ideas can be refined by discussing them on the forum, right?

 

[Present_containing]

Then submit your refined ideas on the forums if you wish afterwards.

I do not oppose that.

What i do oppose is a specific event being given more due than is fair because it is outside the system, and submitting ideas directly to schema afterwards when that is not available otherwise.

 

[ImperialDonut]

Agree with Present on the hosting thing, but other than that something this organized could provide Schema and BB a much clearer picture of what the community would like to see and save them the trouble of sifting through hundreds of forum-posts (not to mention the suggestions that get thrown around in chat all the time).

But yeah this should probably be communicated to Schema, making clear that the express intention of it all is to provide him with a clearer picture of where the community stands. A little notification on the frontpage would certainly help get the word out to a good number of players, because let\'s be honest; if only about 5 people actively take part in this it won\'t be the most reliable picture you\'re getting of the bigger community.

 

[BDLS]

I don\'t think this type of gathering has any real value to be honest. Those who partake may enjoy the focused discussion. There aren\'t even that many suggestions to sift through as of yet. Only when there are so many ideas that they cannot possibly be sifted through THEN there will be a need for so-called community presentation of ideas.

I think the suggestions forum is fine for now. If it ever gets out of hand then something like this can be revisited. I like discussion about balance in chat, but it seems some people place too much importance in this \"think tank,\" which would likely end up having 5 or less regulars who pass down the judgement on someone\'s (possibly) unique idea that the developer may decide to enact.

 

[ImperialDonut]

BDLS has a point about the suggestions still being manageable in the suggestions section, but this can go further, gathering everything that gets thrown around in chat and unrelated topics too. And while there\'s not an insane amount of topics yet, there are loads of page-long comments and seperate semi-related topics to all connect and decipher, this could help.

As I said earlier, It should be clear that this is a community effort on NSE\'s part to help Schema and Beetlebear if they at any time want to know how the players think of the game, no demands, no pressure, just an effort to help them make sense of all the random bits and pieces of info lying around.

And while it may be a bit early to really fully justify something this organized, I really don\'t see the harm in it either. As far as I\'m concerned this may either help them by providing an organized synopsis of the community\'s overal opinion on the game in its current form or it might not achieve anything at all, either way, no harm done.



So will you all stop complaining and submit your idea\'s whether you think this will work or not, and judge it once we\'ve tried it instead of immediately bashing it into the ground....

 

[MrFURB]

I have no clue why there are people who dislike this. Unless you have a problem with it\'s host, Ambedrake or Nightsong Entertainment, you shouldn\'t have a reason to dislike this event.

It\'s not private or excluding you.

It\'s not endangering you or your ideas.

It\'s not serving any ulterior motives.

Nothing you can do will stop it, only Ambedrake can. Now please submit any ideas you\'d like!

 

[caingen]

I can already see there is a lot of discussion about just the act of compiling ideas and the event itself. That alone is enough to keep this little project on track and justify the moderated nature of the event. Given schema\'s current penchant for hearing out good, well thought out, community ideas, this is a fairly appropriate measure. Doing it in the manner NSE will be should provide enough oversight to weed out negative, rambling, or emotional submitions so commonly found on forums, such as this thread; epecially unmoderated ones, just like this thread.



That said, I hope to see this project be very successful. If it is, NSE will hold another discussion in three months; that should be a decent amount of time with schema\'s furious development cycle in mind. In the mean time, I will be updating my Perspective editorial; please feel free to rage about that one as well.



So why is NSE hosting this? Because we can? Its really because we like this game; we see it as the next big community gaming hit. We are also doing it because we are commiting to the game and its developers. And yes, partly because we can, as members of the community we feel we should do things to help.