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Mithridates VI 2300	Posted - 2013.12.22 01:09:00 - [1] - Quote Wanted to start a dialogue about what the forums are for, exploring what users are looking for out of them and whether people find they're an appropriate tool to meet the needs of those users. I'm exploring this as I type it and am not sure where it'll go. There may be nothing of value here, but I'm going to look into it anyway because it beats trolling you saps with inflammatory one-liners about cultural sensitivity. The question that lead me here is this: Do you feel like reporting a bug on the forums is an effective way of drawing attention to it? I'm expanding this to look at the forums as a whole, but I'd like readers to consider their answer to it. Firstly, I want to offer a rough list of user types. This list probably isn't exhaustive, but it gives somewhere to start in talking about whether this tool suits everyone using it. An individual will probably find that many of these use cases apply to them over time. Non-players who are deciding whether to become players. Players who are looking to connect socially and out of character with other players. Players who are looking to connect socially and in character with other players. Players who are looking to troll other players. Presumably CCP want to discourage this user. Players who have questions about game mechanics. Players who have feedback about game mechanics. Players who are having a negative experience with DUST 514 and want to express their frustration. Players who are having a positive experience with DUST 514 and want to offer kudos. Players who are experiencing legitimate technical issues and are looking for the community to help them. Players who are experiencing legitimate technical issues beyond the pay grade of random forum-goers who need to report these to CCP. What advantages/disadvantages does the forum provide these users? What are these users looking for here and how are their needs being met? Non-players who are deciding whether to become players. A new user might come to the forum looking for further information about the game before deciding to invest their time in it. They may want to glean what information they can about gameplay from the conversations here or learn about the culture of gamers in the community. A tool designed for social interaction will benefit this user but packaging this up with bugs and game feedback might be discouraging. With our current board layout, a potential player's experience of the forum is going to be a mixed bag of chatter about the game and fairly pessimistic criticisms. The technical support forum is likely to be checked into by a new player, as they get started and encounter minor issues getting in... and there's a risk that they could be overwhelmed by negative feedback about the game. Our boards contain feedback mixed with social commentary and a lot of that commentary is blunt/trolling. I'm not sure the culture the forums hosts is an invitation to new players to keep at it. Players who are looking to connect socially and out of character with other players. Players who are looking to connect socially and in character with other players. Both of these user types are supported by the bulletin board. The posting tools provided to us, IMO, adequately support the development of a forum community, as evidence by the decent level of activity, the emergence of status hierarchies, the familiarity forumites display towards one another. Social connection is simple enough to support by allowing names to be attached to content. More can be done to encourage it, but this simple level seems to be working well enough. Players who are looking to troll other players. Presumably CCP want to discourage this user. This user is also absolutely supported by the bulletin board. All the troll needs is readers; all the better if they're already engaged in conversation and making their hot button topics clear for exploitation. In a social space, this is to be expected and cannot be efficiently discouraged without getting too heavy handed with moderation or putting serious thought into how to engineer a better culture. However, this support of trolls becomes an issue when we take into consideration that the forum is a joint technical feedback/social interaction tool. Trolling social interactions is one thing, but when the same atmosphere is exposed to the technical feedback side of this forum, with very little separation in tone/content, it makes the forum less effective as a vehicle for providing the developers with feedback. Trawling through bug reports which are full of social commentary and trolling cannot be an effective way to manage a software project. Players who have questions about game mechanics. Players who have feedback about game mechanics. These players are looking to engage socially, but they also need to feel that their input is being taken into consideration by the developers. At present, these players are interacting almost exclusively with other players, which is a mixed bag of constructive criticism, support and blatant trolling/disrespect. If the forums are intended as a tool to provide game feedback, more of an effort needs to be made to show that this feedback is being heard, even if it's just people with SOME type of tag contributing to these discussions superficially, it would make a massive difference. Please refrain from utilizing such inflammatory sarcasm in the future. GÇö CCP Eterne
Mithridates VI 2300	Posted - 2013.12.22 01:09:00 - [2] - Quote Players who are having a negative experience with DUST 514 and want to express their frustration. Players who are having a positive experience with DUST 514 and want to offer kudos. I'd like to see a consistent strategy in responding to rage posting. Are these threads to be locked for ranting or is expressing frustration allowed? What constitutes doing so constructively?If this user type is to be supported by the forum, if respectful, do we wind up with the forum being a massive advertisement for DUST which basically says GÇ£Respectfully, this is bad.GÇ¥ IMO, it would be better to provide a specific place for venting. It's not the greatest to have a place where all of the negative feedback about the game is displayed but the alternative is our present situation where every board is for trashing the game which looks even worse. Making rage posts look like they are exception enough to be separated from others may work better than allowing them to seem the default. Players who are experiencing legitimate technical issues and are looking for the community to help them. These players can use the social tools provided to engage with their peers about the best ways to resolve their issues. It would be nice if CCP stepped in to offer help, as a gesture of support, but players for the most part can assist these players based on their own experiences. Players who are experiencing legitimate technical issues beyond the pay grade of random forum-goers who need to report these to CCP. These users, as far as I'm concerned, need more support than the forums offer. I'm becoming more and more convinced that bug reports would be better split out into a dedicated project management tool to discourage casual posts on the subject, as technical issues often don't get the developer attention they need and wind up bogged down by people raging about having experienced the same issue and similar. This would also cut down on duplicate threads, allowing devs to focus on one topic per issue and encouraging users with further information to contribute to a more official looking issue tracking post. Please refrain from utilizing such inflammatory sarcasm in the future. GÇö CCP Eterne
Mithridates VI 2300	Posted - 2013.12.22 01:18:00 - [3] - Quote Yeah, I think a lot of people who might otherwise have pretty useful contributions to make avoid the forums for similar reasons. I can't shake the feeling that they can be improved upon, if someone in a position to do so made a call on what they were for and whether they were doing that, whatever it is. If they want a social place for mercs to chat, they'd do better to split out the game balance stuff, IMO. If they want to encourage feedback about game balance, I'm not sure that a bulletin board is the right tool for the job. Please refrain from utilizing such inflammatory sarcasm in the future. GÇö CCP Eterne
Mithridates VI 2301	Posted - 2013.12.22 01:32:00 - [4] - Quote I was including "People who want to boast" under social interaction, but their needs probably make them their own usergroup that the forum needs to be designed to handle, because an entire thread dedicated to "Hey, player X, I shot you" from a bunch of randoms is pretty detrimental to the flow of a board as is. Please refrain from utilizing such inflammatory sarcasm in the future. GÇö CCP Eterne

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