Alternative to Advocates

[Aamer Khan]

Actually there is one more "safe" priviledge that could be extended to advocates that could improve the flow of information and assistance...

Let the advocates directly communicate with the CS/WM/DEVS. An advocates only IRC channel or forum could allow the Advocates to directly alert the WM or devs of issues. It would be a "safe" method, since EII would have control of WHO was allowed to post there. Any advocate that abused others, showed favoritism or got out of line, would have this priviledge revoked.

However, if nobody supports this advocates program, regardless of fears, it won't fly and will crash and burn. *shrugs* I guess our "community" has already changed too much.

[Frith-Rae]

Frith-Rae, would you be talking about OUR elitist community meetings in which only people who were power-mad were ever elected to offices that really did not exist?

YUP! That's the one. You knwo I'm known far and wide as that power-hungry dragoness that just wants to somehow take over the Order Forums by posting up logs and votes on my own spare time....

It was a lot of fun while it lasted. Given an opportunity, I'd gladly do it again because of the IMMENSE support of the builders out there who helped push projects along, got right in and worked through build-a-thons, etc.

See that's the thing. Part of me says I'd give it a go anytime. And then the other part of me wonders why I'd ask for that headache again of the accusations flying, of people who just refused to comprehend, of people who refused to participate and then griped that others got to participate....

AAmer, I'm not saying I agree with it or its a nice fact. But after seeing this tried and failed several times on our Esteemed ORder RP shard, where we're SUPPOSED to have this great community - I lost much faith in my fellow players.

Lip service is just that, lip service. Whenever anything tried to get organized, when some tried to put words to actions - they were hacked and torn down by others who for some reason, didn't want anyone else to get together.

I still don't get it. At all. Like Aahmer and others seem to believe - hey if they have no real power, no mechanical power, no anything how could anyone have a problemw tih it. You know what, I agree - How COULD anyone have a problem with it?

But wait..they did, and they destroyed it. And it makes no logical sense at all. But there it is. *sighs and goes to dig a deeper hole to bury herself in*

[Aamer Khan]

Frith-Rae, here is why I believe that it could work.

Way back in the day on Bounty Shard, we organized building crews and had shard wide meetings to vote on where effort would be put and who would lead the crews. Yes, there was a bit of bickering, but nothing like you guys had on order. Even after the merge, we had this same set of "construction leaders" work together to get various projects done. Perhaps the culture on Chaos is somehow different, but we have not seen the rampant attempts at distroying positive moves, at least INGAME. Sure we see them on the boards, but can't use what happens on the boards as any indication of what will happen ingame. The only reason we don't have an organized group now, is that there is very little left to build.

IF, EII can breath new life into Horizons, and IF they can create a large influx of new excited players, and IF there are new things to build and events to take part in, I am betting that we would again, be able to organize like before with the same results.

[Frith-Rae]

Well now, the World Building Project as far as I know continues to this day - which is basically what you were talking about. About where builders could focus their time and effort and taking votes on what to work on and all that. You can ask C'gan that's his baby .

However, what you're talking about is not at all what Advocates are doing - nor what the REST of the Order Community Meetings were about. Not just building, but trying to organize help in new player, make sure there were always helpful people manning the channel, my personal job was to make sure that the meetings and information and voting rights were extended not only to those int he meetings but also those ont he forums who coudln't make the meetings, another part was event planning and trying to put together shard-wide RP events and such that people could have fun with. Etc.etc.etc.

Construction wasn't the only focus, and as far as I can see, nothing in the Advocates' description job would have them covering this aspect anyway.

[BKBanzai]

Professionals good idea. A way to get input from all, in game polls.

[C`gan]

Our meetings I admit went long on many a night. However, when all the bickering and boiling over the shard constitution is taken out, what our meetings actually did accomplish was:

notifications of upcoming PLAYER-RUN events (bardic circles, poetry reads, build-a-thons, etc.)
requests for new-player assistance (stocking New Trismus, getting more people involved in the New Player channel)
notifications and status reports of World Projects construction
notifications of player-built community-usable structures
and some really good down-home discussion times with devs.

These things had their place in a comfortable atmosphere where people could come, learn, take part, speak their peace, and knit the community together. Would I do it again? Without a doubt, I would.

Now, how does this relate to the advocate program? Well, I can see the possibility of having some known advocates for holding down the fort on the shards, someone to be able to go to for reasons relating to suggestions, fixes, little stuff (similar to how the WMs used to work but not so much behind the curtain, if you will). I could see these advocates holding regular meetings similar to dev chats and open sessions we had on Order (like when the devs came in for their info gathering session on confectioner and their Q&A chats we had which actually ended up with at least one positive result: libraries). And with several of these type of advocates, each one could come up with a chat schedule to fit in a weekly or monthly block on a regular schedule without having a need to have everyone in the shard in one location or one time to be heard. For example, Advocate A might have a good time block for bi-monthly Tuesday mornings. Advocate B might be able to pull a weekly Friday afternoon. C might have a good time on Sunday afternoons. D may only be able to pull the first Monday of the month in the AM but be able to help out on an alternating Wednesday overnight with E. With enough advocates in a schedule, each with a given topic or set of topics for the chat, many more voices could be heard and reported back. Similarly, in our chats, we had alternating Wednesday/Thursday evening chats held every other week, plus a monthly Saturday morning.

In a different approach, other advocates would be in the background asking around, getting views from players on the shard about this or that topic, interviewing and/or polling about this or that option about this or that upcoming something in the works. These may not be able to hold set meeting times, but might be able to get some impromptu discussions going in a moderated channel set up for them and any who wish to join in. Both kinds of advocates would be sending in log files and/or poll results to the devs to give them a broader community base input to going about with whatever is under discussion.

I think the main part about what EI is wanting to do is have more communication with those of us playing so they know what directions we collectively (both EI and players) want this game to go to make it better.

[IndyMan]

the right people are doing the job

There is lies the problem. Whom chooses the "right" people ?

Let the advocates directly communicate with the CS/WM/DEVS. An advocates only IRC channel or forum

that is a "special power" and would offend many i am willing to bet.
it went from having no special powers to having a special power all within a few posts.

What's to keep someone from using this "special power" to harass someone they have a beef with ? Say that I dont like player X and I use my "special power" to call a WM and say . he is killing my spawns, or nodes or whatever. would not the WM lean towards someone who had this "special power" in determing the outcome of a confrontation ?

[Sunuke]

On unity we were organising community building projects, I was one of the players that was part of the active group doing this till a certain time we got a new moderator on the Unity forum who found it necesairly to start moving our posts from the main screen where all would come in to the craft sub forum where hardly anybody would look. This way a moderator on the Unity forum ruined all the effort we had done in organising and we hardly could get any players for the fabric isle event.

Luckily the community of Unity was of such that over time by just spamming we got more and more players joining in and we actually finished the bridge while we started with only 3 players, the ones that had organised it.

This is a small example of how these forums have been a part of communication and in making these player events a success or just letting them fail. We tryed to get to some sort of deal with the moderator so the post could remain for about a week but there was no way any discussion was possible.

This was when I gave up organising community events on Unity. The last thing I've done event wise was building the crystal shaper in parsinia and i really enjoyed doing that.

I remember how we raced the NA servers and even thou they finished the lava tube before us just because they had gotten it before us we did finish it in a non stop community event which lasted 21 hours of crafting, for the last part we gotten all the remaining crafters, transporters and guards to the tunnel and we finished it. I came to this event as healer in case a guard went down and some even got an adventure level making sure the wolf population was kept down.

I think things like this would be part of what such a council could and should do.

Now on the other hand. We all know how politics go. Some players would only wanna be part of the council for the sake of being on it, and this will be an issue which will polute the community.

You won't get this with WM appointed advocates. These advocates should have an advocate account with an advocate character, this character should have all items on it, formula's, tech's just name it which are required to give the proper advise. It would be advisable to have on these accounts the texts of all quests for which this advocate would be responcable.

I honestly think that a council would bring politics onto the communities even more then advocates would bring because these advocates would have seperate accounts

[Consecrated.ECSS]

Exactly Jayne!

Can't really understand why anyone fears this. Those that will help, will be the exact same ones that always have.

i vote that Aamer Khan shodul tak ehte LEAd role in the council... =p

hehe, good to see i can still get in touchwit yaAamer even if not on Vent..

but still. put forth a good idea, coem and support it..

He He He..

*there is no way i can "con" u into commign back??*

Miss ya buddy...

and Lii, she taught me how to craft Stone and brass
that i'll never forget.

[saphosar]

Just a few statements:

1. I read from the advocates article that advocates are intended to be some kind of player based ingame customer support to make sure player questions are answered. No special powers at all, only a free subscription as reward for their help.

IMHO this is ok, although the community is already doing this somehow.

2. why do you think we really need a council? there is already a suggestions sub forum. everybody can read/post there. Devs/CS/WM can read/post there too. If they do they will get plenty of impressions what the people like/don't like and what they would desire. More or less crazy ideas or hints about those little things that go wrong or can be improved.
Why should they depend on a council that only stands for very few people and only forwards information the council likes?

3. what on earth is an elder? does this title require more than 500 days of playtime? successfully taken part in the xyz event? adv. rating > 200?

If someone likes to have a title to feel proud of, ask them to introduce some kind of "Elder" talisman, similar to the "expert xyz". Sounds good but is worthless at all.


Regards, Sap