Improve the Player Request mechanism

[Enkidu]

Maybe 2/3rds of every Player Request I've ever made, and I've made double-digit player request counts, happened.

Time to execution ranges from over six months down to, like, a week. Depended entirely on who the team were and what their priorities are.

It's a bit much to ask the staff to trawl every discussion forum. People forget that the devs are not paid to do this, this is not their day job, and they have to do a tonne of different activities. Increasing staff count would slow down voting and would create a case of too many cooks.


I entirely agree that we should make it clear what the request system lets you do. Which is nearly anything you want to do, if it works for the mod. I might make a tutorial about how to give all the information you need to get a request processed fast.

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[Karlotta]

Probably wouldn't be the worst idea to make the approved development requests subforum visible, with a notice that coming changes are pending implementation.

That would be great, it would also stop the People from asking: Done yet >implement a random number of ? here<

*bump*

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[Binski]

Yesterday (and also over a year ago) some people hinted that unless something is submitted in the player request subforum, it is likely (or even destined by standard staff procedure) to get ignored by the staff, even if it's a suggestion that everyone seems to agree to in the discussion forums.

This isn't really mentioned anywhere on the public forum, and it seems more like a back door through which those "in the know" can get their ideas, suggestions, or demands in more easily than others.

That also seems to go for things that affect the entire community and not just the player posting the request, such as rep hacks for an entire ID, removals of an entire ID, things that are meant to benefit new people and not the person submitting the request.

The later two points are problematic for several reasons:

- People who aren't aware of this will get frustrated why their seemingly good suggestion is being ignored by the staff

- Useful ideas will be overlooked by the staff

- Submitted ideas can not be viewed by a large number of people, who could have better ideas or ways to improve them even more

- Posts can get lost by forum glitches or misclicks, or by forgetting whether they were already submitted or not

- People wont know why someone else's request was rejected will submit the same thing again

It therefore seems desirable to:

- Have at least one "player request" subforum that is not invisible, for requests that affect more people than the person submitting the request.

- Give reasons publicly for why something was rejected

- Explain the mechanism for submitting such requests (more) visibly on the forum

+1!

Seriously though, I finally learned that if you want staff to really consider something, and vote on it, you need to submit it in a real request. All that makes good sense to me.

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[Karlotta]

bump

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[Karlotta]

Bump because of this: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...125&page=9

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[Karlotta]

Nothing to stop people posting their ideas here. Things don't get ignored like you think they do. Also there's no harm in poking people on discord and saying "Hey look this is a good idea can you look at it?"

However with that being said we are looking into a couple of things to improve these requests though they are still in very early talks.

How many more years do you guys need?

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[Nightowl]

I also see, 'If the Devs/GMs/Mods don't want to do the work, then they should step aside and let others do it'. Well, my answer to that is these people work in their spare time, put a lot of hours in so that you can play a Game (their play time suffers as a consequence). Most of you know ex-Admins/GMs/Devs - just ask them how much time they put in to doing this, sometimes, thankless Job. You just need to look at the turnover rate to maybe get an idea. People volunteer for the positions (possibly thinking they can do a great Job, but quite a few suddenly realise how muchtime consuming it can be).

So, please have a thought about that, when you complain that nobody listens to you, as there are also hundreds of other people all clamouring for attention.

Hmpf.
Sorry, but I can't and won't leave it like that.
I know of several people who have offered to help.
I don't know anyone who got any answer.
(And I'm just one of them ...)
I don't think it's good if on the one hand it is said that the mods / admins / defs are overloaded and therefore cannot process requests and on the other hand help offers are not even answered.
These offers of help are not even (politely) rejected, they are ignored!
And is there any wonder if there is frustration on the part of the players?

Edit: (added)
The Player Request mechanism has an important problem (the same as almost all requests to the staff): Communication & Feedback
They don't happen. It wouldn't be too much to ask for an update after a week, but that doesn't happen.
Take this as a suggestion for improvement and a corresponding player request will follow soon.

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This is a game, a Roleplay-Game!

[Karlotta]

I'm not going to, once again, get involved in the discussions sparked by the ever-repeating self-contradicting excuses certain staff members and their sycophants bring up every time someone tries to help them solve a problem that they and the community have.

Instead I'll point out that none of what they said is a counter argument to doing this:

- Have at least one "player request" subforum that is not invisible, for requests that affect more people than the person submitting the request.

- Give reasons publicly for why something was rejected

- Explain the mechanism for submitting such requests (more) visibly on the forum

and that half of what they say is an argument FOR it, because it requires 0 work from them, saves them the work of telling people the status of their request, and lets members educate themselves by reading other people requests.

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[Karlotta]

Bump with a Lyth quote.



EDIT: Skorak would also like more transparency now, but he probably doesn't know about this thread because he has me on ignore since the time when he was an admin. It appears as though now that he is no longer staff, he finds the request system to be extremely inadequate.

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