Admin Notice: Removing /setmsg Functionality

[Oorn]

To think such trivial change would create storm of you-know-what...It's like WoW all over again. What this change will do is help with 0 rule in a long run. Suprisingly, having to type phrase instead of l1 makes you put more effort into whole encounter. Also whenever i get only preset lines when talking with someone, i feel like this preson didnt want to RP with me and whole enconter was a waste. It all may sounds stupid, but psychological effect from typing response rather than L1 is quite noticable.

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When "roleplay" around you seems to be diminishing... all you can do is be a new beacon of roleplay to light up everyone else's interactions.

[Reid]

Speaking and vote about it will probably don't help, what this thread proves:
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=95689

So the only possibility is, to leave the sinking ship.

Removing one abused command is going to kill the server. Yes, you're right. Your logic is FLAWLESS. MARKUS FOR LEAD ADMIN 2013

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[Juzt156]

Honestly I don't see much effect. Though this is based on the fact, that I have never used the command and have no idea what it is for. So clearly I never needed it.

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[Geodin]

It's a good thing I'm a fast typer, because there went my "Powering down engines, standby" preset message I had so that I could avoid being insta-killed by pirates while I'm typing my first response.

I don't have a specific criticism, as honestly, I'm not really effected too much by this decision. I rarely use the presets myself, only in those situations where I seem to often be killed by pirates while I'm typing my first response. "2 mil or die ten seconds!" - situations.

I see the points made here in this thread, and I see that this is to create more dynamic RP instead of the same repetitive messages, and I'm guessing the hope is that this will prevent the reverse side (of what I use the occasional preset for), which is pirates of /l1 /l2 and engage within the first 15 seconds of an encounter.

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. The suggestions for preset group messages is a helpful one. The idea of putting preset messages in a different color is a good one. Delaying the preset message time is a good one. But were any of these thoughts considered PRIOR to a total shutdown of the functionality of preset messages? Was there no middle ground that could have considered before it became "all or nothing" yet again?

But I would urge the admins and devs to be, as a general statement of policy, less dictatorial and less inconsistent in their decision making process, and to be more inclusive of feedback about decisions (and more open minded about them) PRIOR to "bringing the hammer down" so to speak. I'm not trying to sound hyper-critical, honestly. You guys deal with a lot of issues and you have to make decisions -- I get that -- But my own personal feelings (Which will probably be ignored, but I'm getting used to that, sadly) are that you are making many rash decisions, without preamble or discussion, that are alienating an ever-shrinking player pool. So it is less a criticism and more "a word of caution."

Not that my opinion counts for much.

[Curios]

Ahahaha. so much drama over there about having to tap 20 buttons instead of 3.
I like the change just because of the side effect it have on lazy arses around this place who don't want to do anything.

More noob nerfs. Life on noob level must be hard to motivate noobs to evolve into the normal level where the life isn't that terrible. But you have to tap more buttons =)

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[fencore]

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.

[monmarfori]

It would be fair for removing /setmsg, as one of the only "negative" change.

[Jihadjoe]

On the topic of setmsg.

Using it for roleplay purposes -
This was never a good thing. In this regard I'm glad it is gone. It did promote laziness and boring repetative interactions. I find it hilarious that Anaximander agrees with this statement,

I think it's great it's gone

despite that fact it will severely handicap a number of his friends.

Use of /setmsg in group to give orders and otherwise communicate between team members in combat -
Losing this is a major blow to anyone who leads groups in fights. It will mean that communication will be more confusing and slower. I would suggest re-implementing setmsg but make sure it is only functional in group chat.

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[Geodin]

I was referring to this as well as the Jump/Cloak issues, specifically, how it was "going to be implemented in 4.87" and then was suddenly changed even though it was --specifically-- said that they would not change until 4.87. There are also a couple of particular instances I am referring to that it would not be right to discuss publicly. (If you would like an explanation of these feel free to PM me)

I made a point of saying I'm not trying to be hyper-critical, so let me re-iterate: By and large, I think the admin team does a wonderful job. If I have offended any of you, I apologize, as that was not my intention. But I do know that many (a broad swath really) have been extremely unhappy with several of the policies enacted lately. I've been hearing a lot about it. I have my own personal complaints (and will keep them to myself, unless asked). But my post was more of a word of caution about sudden HAMMER-DOWN, SCREW IT policies becoming the norm, not that they were the norm. Maybe I missed it, but where was this (setmsg) discussed by the community before a decision was made? Or was it just "this is how it is, deal with it, we don't give a [blank] what you think" <--- because this attitude is what I'm talking about. [Edit: Because there are a lot of REAL GOOD suggestions in this thread that were either ignored, or never heard in the first place]

I am a big fan of middle ground and reasonable discussion leading to positive compromises. I'm not talking capitulation. It is a two way street. And I say all this knowing full well that there are balance issues that you have to deal with that I'm hardly an expert on, and that someone is going to be unhappy no matter what you do in many situations.

I wasn't trying to say anything out of line, or blatantly inflammatory.
So if I am out of line, then that's on me.

Engaging STFU GEODIN mode :-P

[jammi]

I'd just like to point out that we're not ignoring solutions proposed here. Group chat activation, as an example. It is being discussed, however only Cannon has the technical capability to write the code for the change. Just because a change hasn't been implemented within 24 hours, doesn't mean all feedback is being ignored.

Cloaks are also being patched so they're only dropped by disruptors, for example (however, see coding issue mentioned above). Jumping barges is also still possible, just extremely difficult. The group jump bubble radius has just been dropped to 100m from 500m.

That said, I'd love some more feedback about the team's performance. Feel free to send that stuff through to my inbox if you don't want to put it in public.

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