Feldon From Kyle “Kander” Vallée on the EQ2 Forums:
We are opening a new area here on the forums for the sole purpose of getting raid feedback quickly and easily in order to assist us to make changes, tweaks quicker and more effectively and vastly improve future raid content.
This area will be by invite only and will be for raid leaders and raiders who are participating in the upper echelon of raid content. This is area will be a direct link to the development team. We want it to feel open and constructive.
The goal is to have a limited amount of participants so we can moderate it and post frequently without having to dig through tons of threads and posts. So we will have limited slots.
If you are interested in participating in this forum and wanting to contribute to the betterment of all raid content, please contact me directly with your in-game name, guild, raid position and current raid progress.
kvallee (at) soe.sony.com
Commentary
You may ask why a raid council like this is needed. Raid guilds tend to be guarded about their strategies, as for them, competition is important. And game developers tend to not want to give away entire strategies of fights, as players are supposed to be figuring this out. Such an invite-only forum will allow a level of honesty and brainstorming not possible on a public forum.
Also, all the information will be in one place, so it will require less digging by developers and so should result in a net gain in development time on raiding AND other forms of gameplay.
This is not an elevation of one playstyle over others, as these days, the raid content is adapted so that soloers and groupers get to experience it, rather than entirely separate content being developed for all 3 play styles. Even so, I predict people will flippantly ask for a Solo Council, Tradeskill Council, or Group Council in the comments.
I want a decorating council.
…. but it is an elevation of one playstyle over all the rest.
Forming hardcore crafting guild. Must chain pull rush orders in 4 minutes or less.
😆 But an invite only forum for ten to twenty raid leaders and some of their raiders to discuss matters which primarily effect a couple of thousand players is directing resources to a particular play style. In an era where the resources of the EQ2 have become limited this is “an elevation of one play style over all the rest”. Justified quite possibly: but still preferential treatment.
I think it’s going to allow them to focus their limited resources better and spend less time crossing their fingers hoping they’re addressing the top issues.
We’ve already got that covered! But to stay on topic, as a former raid leader and highly competitive raider, I actually think this is a great idea. If you look at it from a decorating stand point, the Devs are actually hearing and making moves to hook us up in ways, now all that is really left is for them to do something with the PvP aspect.
The reason they have to do this is because they can’t test raids very well (not at all internally), so basically high end raiding is a never ending beta test…might as well have beta forums for it, lol.
I hate ‘secret’ stuff. I hope they let normal people see what is discussed, without clouding what is said. I understand the need to not have joe blow without a clue adding into the discussion a bunch of rabbits, but once they go ‘secret’ you have to assume they could be doing anything.
It’s secret stuff before the council. By setting up a focus group of target customers that they currently style to serve they are bringing better visibility and collaboration into their process without the noise of morons and trolls closing the issues.
It’s common in any I’ve worked for. If this is successful then it’s likely other focus groups will arise. Also, even though the focus groups have limited members, they are influenced by the greater public. So, it’s almost like crowd sourcing the real issues hierarchically.
It’s a smart move
A crafter focus group could be interesting, if they make other groups. Less of the people complaining about the requirement of multiple crafter types on the Earring and Shawl quests, more people who actually know a lot about crafting and have a lot of experience.
I really like the idea of this because it opens up a more direct line of communication between raid forces and the dev team. Some players take raiding very seriously and I am one of them. The idea of taking 24 players and getting them all to coordinate to accomplish the same goal is a ton of fun.
Some players have been raiding for a long time, know game mechanics very well, various types of encounters and their scripts and can view new encounters from various angles and from there can provide much feedback to the dev team involved with such things.
I don’t see this in any way being detrimental to people outside of this circle, nor do I see it being an upper hand for the players that get invited to participate.
Ideally this will be beneficial to all raiders across the board.
We want it to feel open and constructive, but not include more than a few elite players that we pick and choose. And have the forum accessible to those few whether just to read or post…
If you want this to be fair and not get flack from the other “raiders” who you might not think are good enough to be a part of this council and put in their 2 cents then you might want to at least make this “council raiding forum” Read-Only for everyone else…
And then again, whos to say the “top raid guilds / players” are the ones who will find all the bugs? Of course some of the more noob friendly guilds can and will find bugs in raiding also but in easier content that better guilds wouldn’t have found just because they can clear it no problem? What about that entire section of players? They get to be ignored/left out continuously I suppose as they are already?…
At the end of the day I see why they would want to do this type of thing anyways… they get free information thats critical about their game that they don’t have to pay people money for and thus possibly giving rewards to these “elite few” for their generous time and participation…
I think this ia a very good idea.
IN a similar vein, though slightly expanding the topic, I thought SWG did the class leads extremely well (before all of the changes and NGEs and what not). Actually had the Pistoleer Class lead in my guild and he was not hardcore at all, just knew the living daylights out of every element of the class.
Vanguard also had class leads and used them to absolute perfection. I hold a view that they are missing from this game. And they are not elitist if the correect folks are chosen. They are open, helpful experts in their field who are widely respoected as the source of knowledge for their class. Given I remember the SWG guys well and the Vanguard Troubador perfectly is a good advert for their effective use.