(04-22-2013, 05:39 AM)Geodin Wrote: However: I am noticing a disturbing trend here in the last 6 months or so that is developing where decisions are being made with no middle ground, very little community discussion, and no possibility of reconsideration. And where there IS community discussion, often many of those suggestions are flatly ignored.
I, and I mean this seriously, would like to know what it is we've done which falls into this category aside from the original subject of this thread, which is a situation that we're still examining and have, as staff, been discussing for a while. We have a very strong history of implementing a change and then adapting it to suit better the needs of the community.
If we're looking at the past six months, the examples I can think of are the following:
Nov 27 - Removal of Member Ability to Change Forum Name - http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=90475
This was spurred by our change of forum boards and because MyBB does not support disassociated login and display names. We provided a period of longer than a month where users had the ability to change feely after we made notice, after which we locked the ability down. Users can still have their names changed now if they ask an Administrator.
Mar 04 - 4 Hour Rule Revision - http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=95073
For a rather lengthy period of time, a large portion of the userbase had asked for updates to the PvP Death restrictions that were in place, mainly a shortening of the then Four Hour Rule. We obliged. Other portions of the conditions of those rules were altered to reduce staff paperwork, but have been minor.
Mar 09 - Public Nomad ID Release - http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=95302
There's been a community-wide desire for a Public Nomad ID since before I had been playing here. When 4.86 was released, such an ID was included but not open to the public. Last month, we updated the ID and worked with the leadership of the K'Hara faction prior to it being made available in order to set things up for the community. Since release, Alaska has been added to the ID's range as per community suggestion.
Mar 24 - Recurring Commodity Events - http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=95955
We often received suggestions to run some special events. The first set of these are the recurring commodity events spearheaded by Jamie. We have taken the suggestions of users in the thread and elsewhere as to the nature of future events in this line.
Apr 14 - Forum Reorganization - http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=97044
Although not all of the changes were suggested by the community, the separation of the Bounty Board into its own forum is one example of a change made that we would not likely had thought to have done without community request. Also, once the reorganization was complete, we reverted the Watering holes and recollapsed the Faction sections according to community request.
The only other instance which might fit what you were describing would probably be changing of cloak/jump functionalities. The interesting bit there is for the months before we implemented these changes, there had been a very constant murmur of resentment against the ability for ships with cloaks to get away with murder, as it were, or that jumping ships were more or less wrecking trade/pirate interaction. These two together provided a fairly inhospitable environment, so, prompted by these complaints, changes were made. Although the cloak change that we started with was less our desired outcome and more a product of a couple bugs, those were ironed out and now we have cloaks that are functional again, but more balanced. Jump changes were reverted entirely and a notice posted for 4.87 changes. I can't find the original thread where the cloaks was discussed, but cut me some slack if you could. I found the rest and it's almost 4:00 AM.
Anyhow, while I would be able to agree with you if you were to suggest that we don't always provide advance notice of changes, I would be hard pressed to see where we've been inflexible and unreceptive or unresponsive to community input. But, if I've missed something in there, show me. Although firm in my ideas, I've never hesitated to admit that I was wrong once shown.
In general, and through experience, we've generally found that the most effective way of implementing new or different things works best if we as a team discuss and consider the possibilities and implications among ourselves, and then assemble the best of the ideas we have. Then we implement when there is sufficient agreement among the team, and from that point listen to the pulse generated by the community. We then work back to incorporate a mix. No changes are ever made just for the sake of making changes - we always have a reason and motivation from either direct member request or as a response to something we consider harmful to the server environment.
More often than not, it's the member requests that we begin with. The removal of setmsg a day ago is an exception to this, yes, but not one that we made on a whim, and we most certainly did not expect a hugely positive response. This is something that had been discussed among the team on and off for at least a couple months in response to an unfortunate amount of abuse. It was not a decision made lightly and we had considered more than we've been given credit for. Does this mean that we're done with this? It's been just over 24 hours, so absolutely not. I can't say what the final form of any further adaptations will be, especially since I'm not the one who has the ability to make the practical implementations for these changes, but we've never set anything in stone at any time and for any policy change.
