Herald Program Discussion

[walkerglassmire]

I've been thinking about applying, but there's something I'd like to bring up/question first.
<SNIP>
To me, that means it would make the most sense to have whatever herald flag is planned on the cat. This is good...except it sounds like a permanent thing and I wouldn't want to be a herald the entire time I'm playing Kala.

Are there any plans to possibly give permission to a player to be a herald, then allow them to toggle a flag on and off?
<SNIP>

I was wondering the same thing. There are normally very few people awake in the evenings when I play, but was thinking of applying. But, don't want to do Herald stuff all the time, since I pretty much always play SiLang. I have a lair to build.

[Vermithraxx]

Honestly, if I were thinking about applying (personally, I'm not), I'd put the Herald flag on a new character.

Again, just my view, but I'd view it as a responsibility, therefore any time on my Herald character would be for the community.

This also avoids the whole political entanglement. I wouldn't tell *anybody* that the Herald was my alt. Solves that issue.

Of course, if all the forums are open, and Heralds have to more communication with the Devs than anybody else (i.e. None) then... I question what the job actually entails. As was said above, just another Joe Schmoe on the all-public forums.

I'd dodge this bullet if only so I don't have to say on a daily basis: "Unity? No update. Plot Reclaims? No Update." etc.

[Velea]

Kala and others, if you notice in the post you quoted, I also said we're reconsidering the in-game portion of the program. No decision has been made yet, so I can't say what it will be. Just that we're reconsidering that. So until we decide if that part is even being kept or not, I can't say how we've decided to deal with the concerns you (and others) have raised about it.

As I said, this program was modeled after ones that exist successfully in the industry already. We're still "talking" to the community managers of those programs to see if they've had these issues arise and how they were dealt with. We'd rather not make a knee jerk type decision that we then want to change later. Until this decision is made and we can act accordingly, we are holding off making decisions about the "who" part of the program as well, so that we can make sure those who have already expressed interest know our plans for dealing with this issue.

Again, thanks for sharing questions/concerns.

[C`gan]

Well, how about this for a sideswipe, Velea?

You know how we have the motd at the beginning of login, when it also pops up all the channels you've joined when you log in? There have been rare circumstances when system info needs to be passed along that notes have been put forth there instead of popping up a big info window in the middle of the screen. In addition to toggleability, what about toggling a "herald" channel where if the person is in herald mode, their name gets added to a system message saying "Your herald(s) currently available are: <LIST>.", plus when toggled as herald, they have exclusive admin in the herald channel. If they're not herald, admin is off. Admin can't be given over without a heraldic password.

[Velea]

I think I follow you. We'll cross this bridge when we decide whether to keep the in game portion or not. Thanks for the idea.

[Justa Mirage]

Most of my concerns about the Herald program stem from what Kala has already stated. The original heralds were volunteers without the blessings of the company, just doing "newsletters" and "happenings" in their shard.

Now it appears that VI wants them to have a "role" in the shard, what that role is hasn't been decided, but in general, not the home town newsletter with interviews and news.

They want the herald to actually interact with player's complaints, suggestions, bugs the game might still have, etc. There is a perfectly good venue here on the forums to post problems with the game, and a help ticket system that can also do the same as a herald without interrupting their game play.

I am pretty much sure with the population the way it is, they probably won't have many people constantly sending /tells but it could get ugly in the middle of fighting, your tab bar fills up and you get tons of pop ups on your screen from players.

Not as much on Order, but on Chaos, there are a "lot" of cliques and I mean a "lot" and some of those don't get along with other cliques and there is pretty much some internal rivalry that never ends. A herald's job would be a never ending "Guild 1 is doing this again, or Guild 2 is camping <spot> in game."

Heralds should NOT be "Shard Police" as they have 0 power to do anything but listen and report. I liked the old herald way where the volunteer went around and interviewed players and reported on "in-game" happenings, adding some role playing to the text, and have nothing to do with interaction between Devs and Players.

If they pursue this idea, then I like the suggestion that they are given extra character slots so they can be given a "Herald" character with a decent level so they can actually travel into areas and be an observer (complete with JAFO hat). This way, their game identity is safe and not compromised.

[LaughingOtter]

*takes off Virtrium design team hat & puts on the one that says "JAFP" (Just Another Friendly Player )*

When Alladania was Chaos shard Herald, just fulfilling the neighborhood news function and posting 'Chaos Reigns!' took up a significant amount of play time for both of us. I don't see that function in the description of the new Heralds, and I feel that it's a mistake to omit it.

Reading the forums, collecting bug reports, making sure the team knows about new issues that come up - these are tasks normally delegated to the community manager. The community manager serves as an interlocutor and single point of contact for both the community and the team. The question I have is this: are the Heralds assisting the community manager, or serving as surrogate CMs for this function?

Working to expand the KB (presumably by contributing player guides & such) is a worthy and needed function, but I submit that a better use of player resources would be to recruit volunteers to serve as representatives or advocates for the various schools, as well as dragon and biped racial issues in general. Advocates of this type have also been used by other games and been very successful.

Make no mistake, I think the roles outlined in the Herald announcement are roles which need to be filled. By the same token, the traditional Herald role is also one which needs to be filled - making a point of greeting new players, answering questions, collecting and reporting the news of the day, and so on.

Can one group fill all these functions? Yes, at least for a time, but not forever. Assuming Horizons continues to succeed and grow, eventually the player base will be too big not to have specialists taking on these duties. I submit that it's better to look to what Horizons will need rather than what it needs now, and implement accordingly.

*Takes off JAFP hat & scurries back to the quest crafting station...*

[Creme]

It seems to be as though many of these functions are already taking place among the playerbase (at least on Chaos).

New players usually find their way in NPA channel, where I think sometimes players beat each other up to try and be the first to get out an explanation. Sometimes you have multiple players repeating what another player has already explained, I think out of the desire to be helpful. For those players that are not in NPA, there's always marketplace & dragon. From what I've seen, questions are usually answered very quickly, and again, often by several players.

So...that leaves the forums. It seems as though you are looking for volunteers to review posts, collate the information and pass this information back to the community manager? Why not use polls? You've got an instant collater right there.

Then there's the greeting new players in game. How would a herald know that there's a brand new player to greet?

Just seems to me that we have vehicles for most of what you're looking for in a herald, and if the suggestions, game bugs and other forum topics, in addition to the ticket system are not working then there are problems that a herald (or several heralds) are not going to be able to cope with, as all it seems they will be doing is filtering information and then passing it on in yet another medium. As such, the filtering is going to be subjective based on their experiences/mindset--which I'm not sure is a good idea.

As far as giving feedback on shard issues, isn't that already being done, given that we have developers as live shard players?

I do think player guides, quest guides are a great idea, but I think those can be solicited via requests in those forums.

I would like to see a list of ALL active quests eventually.

[Amarie Ancalimon]

I'd like to address some of the concerns raised in the thread.

First, the program is modeled not after the previous "Herald" program, but we kept the same name because we liked it. If someone would like to be a "shard Herald" with the specific purpose of creating reports in a role-play format, that's great and we'd like to have them. The program is actually modeled more off the Dark Age of Camleot "Team Lead" program. This program has helped the developers from early beta right up to present day to be in better touch with the game's community. We did not feel that the Istaria community was large enough now to support 50 or so Heralds, nor did we need that many given the size of the community at present. And rather than end up short changing a particular school or race, a general Herald program would be better to start with. If, and we can all hope this day comes soon, we find that the community is large enough and the needs are great enough to have one representative for each school, then we have the option of putting out requests to our current team of Heralds to choose an area to represent, and open the program again for more as needed.

Much of what the Heralds will do is to help us focus the communication. While it is true that the developers play on the live shards, and can listen there, the time they have is limited. The Heralds are an extra set of ears, if you will, while in game. This also frees the developer who is in game to be able to spend time simply enjoying the game. I know from my own experience that if I leave the various chat channels on all the time while in game, I find myself sitting in one area just reading chat, responding to things people say, looking for problems they raise... in other words, I'm not playing the game, I'm still developing the game. Having the extra "sets of ears" in game allows me, and other developers, the luxury of being able to spend some of our free time, our leisure time, the ability to turn off those extra chat channels and just enjoy the game that we have put so much time in to making. We don't do it often, but every now and then it's fun to be "just a player" of the game we make. And I, for one, think that is one thing that makes this team special. They really do play, not just develop.

The second reason for having Heralds is to provide a voice to those who do not post on the forums. Even in a community as close as Horizons, only a very small percentage of players will ever come to these forums. The Heralds act as a way for those voices to be heard. The majority of new players in a world as "old" as Istaria is will assume that an issue they find, or a bug they discover, is so old that it just can't be changed. Or they think that "someone else" will report it. But they will mention something in game in hopes that another player has found a work around for the problem they found. Heralds can help bring those concerns to the developers.

The other important role of Heralds (team leads in DAoC) was to coordinate testing for the developers. This is a key role that helps save the developers more time than you can imagine. Heralds allow us to have one bug report rather than multiple. Heralds can be specially taught on how to collect information on a bug and provide the sort of feedback that players don't often give. Heralds also can save developer time by posting, or saying in game "This is a known issue that they are working on." The Quality Assurance Manager is ultimately responsible for ensuring that a delta is throughly tested, but that does not mean that he/she has to perform the tests. Likewise the Community Manager works with the QAM, and in this case the Heralds, to keep the developer team aware of what is happening with deltas, bugs or game related issues. The Heralds don't replace either of these people, but support them.

Further, a Herald can take communication the opposite way. They can bring to more of the community questions the developers have, or areas that the developers are focused on.

I know that we're asking much of our Heralds, and that is why we're making every effort to ensure that they know our expectations before they join the program. And we're taking in to consideration the feedback in this thread as well as the concerns some have raised when asking to be a part of the program. We have decided to change the in game "title" portion that we'd had in the original announcement. We won't be officially identifying those who have chosen to be Heralds inside the game, though they will wear a title on the forums.

We're confident that the program is one that can work and enhance the world of Istaria. There may be bumps along the road, but we're prepared to deal with those bumps as they arise.

I hope that this rather lengthy post addresses the concerns raised here. If I did miss something in particular, please either post your question again, or send me a PM with the concern you raised that I missed so I can follow up.

- Amarie

[Silverblaze]

Read kalas post first.

I'm in the same boat.

I dont wanna always have to type in legalese...or political jargon.

I dont wanna have to preface everythign with "this is just my opinion"

I mean, social dynamics is a big thing. not everyone gets along...period.

If i dont like someone and I divulge it to a firend and that firend says somethign to their friend...well you know how the game "telephone" goes.


Example:

The Herald doesnt like me and is trying to get me banned!?!?!

Um...I just said so-and so charges too much for hoard...

We all know every system and set of rules laws etc. have flaws....that one is rather glaring with the small player base that behaves much like a small town

Good to look to the future, but if a program causes so much stress that the future never comes to pass, that would be bad.

I'm not saying its abad idea, just saying its major concern of mine.
I'd love to do all I an for the game in every possible venue, but objectively... some plans look better on paper.

I just wanna also voice my opinion,as virtrium clearly already knows, this program will need LOTS of thought ot make it work.

[Creme]

I thought I read an excellent post on this and outlining the possible "schisms" that might occur in game because a herald might be blamed for nerfs that he might have had nothing to do with, or even he might have passed on the information that some minority group didn't like something, then BAM, it gets changed and the herald gets the flack for it. (I can't find that post to quote it, so maybe I dreamed it or something, but anyway, it was pretty good stuff).

I think I also read something about most players having played for a very long time, and as such, will have strong opinions about things one way or another and as much as they might try to be objective, there's that whole subconscious thing going on.

Sorry to whoever posted that, I am not trying to steal your ideas, I'm agreeing and would just like to quote and post a "Ditto" if I could find it.

Added:

Heralds can be specially taught on how to collect information on a bug and provide the sort of feedback that players don't often give.

This sounds like a regular bug report. You could do this by implementing a specially formatted web page form with all the required information as data entry fields. I've not known of heralds usually doing this, but beta testers. Would this not also be more valuable on blight? I've noticed on occasion on the blight testing where a developer will post what is new and what, in particular, they would like specifically looked at. Why now have a herald do something that can/should be done on blight, anyway and why give them a special name for it?

[Kala]

First, I apologize in advance if this offends anyone. I tried to be as tactful as possible.

* Heralds read the forums regularly and report posts to the proper developer should an issue arise that requires developer feedback. They also communicate with the players on items currently in development, and maintain an internal “known issues� list so that they can communicate with players the direction the game is going in the future.

Personally, I feel that keeping track of suggestions and ideas in posts is a forum moderator and/or community manager job. If this is the community manager's job and they don't have enough time to do it, by all means either get more help or open a new position and divvy up the responsibilities. If it's the moderators job and they don't have enough time to be doing that, then maybe they ought to make a choice -- either write quests/do artwork for the game or be a forum mod.

I agree with the concept of combining jobs to be more efficient or save costs or whatever, but this means some of our volunteers are wearing three or four (or more) hats. To me, that means quality is going to start dropping somewhere.

Communication with the players regarding direction of the game is the community manager's job.

* Heralds will have a special title in game on at least one active character that allows other players to identify them. This allows players who are new to the game someone to speak to with questions and feedback.

It seems to me that many newbies get help in NPA, MP, or Dragon. IMO, these channels ought to be auto-joined on any new character. Feedback is usually as simple as posting on the forums or submitting a ticket. There's little need for a Herald here. If you want feedback going to a specific dev, add more options to the support page. "I want to give feedback on: Quests, Game Mechanics, Resource Locations, etc."

* Heralds are volunteers, and players of Istaria first and foremost. Thus it is important for them, and for other players, to remember that they need time to just enjoy the game as well. They should use their own discretion in revealing their Herald status while in game.

I don't feel they should mention it at all. Of course, I also feel that anyone affiliated with Vi should not mention who their main characters are. This includes people not on the payroll, quest writers, forum mods, devs, and Joe Bob the Janitor. Unfortunately, the cat's so far out of the bag on this one, it's already got grandkittens living on other planets. I won't go so far as to say they shouldn't hold positions of guild responsibility (i.e., guild leaders or officers), but I know some people feel that way.

* Heralds help to test for bugs in new content, verify bug reports, and summarize player feedback about the game through frequent reports on an internal forum set up for Heralds. While it is not required that Heralds play on the Blight shard, it is expected that Heralds have at least one copy of their character on the Blight shard that can be used for testing purposes.

I realize the testing population of Blight may not be so hot, but is there another way to get more people there aside from putting more responsibilities on the Heralds? I mean, so far you the suggested purpose of Heralds is to: have them read threads and ferret out info to pass to the devs, helping newbies and getting feedback, getting community "vibe," helping with the Knowledge Base/writing a FAQ, letting them have their own playtime, on top of whatever they do for a living in real life.

Do they really need to be playtesters as well? Maybe you could offer some sort of incentive to encourage people to test stuff. (And maybe also mention there's a NPC vendor price difference between live and blight. I don't think that's common knowledge.)

In summary, I'm glad you want to have more interaction between the players and the developers...I just have a feeling that this isn't the best way of doing it.

[Amarie Ancalimon]

Kala, thank you for catching that I missed removing part of the Herald expectations. After careful consideration, we have decided to remove the title in game portion. I thought I made an edit to remove that from the annoucement earlier, but obviously missed it. That's been fixed. Just so I'm very clear, we are not going to have Heralds identified in game in any way. Just as with the case of programs that this is modeled after, it is up to the player who is a Herald to identify themselves in game should they choose to.

[Kala]

Thank you for that clarification, Amarië! I still feel Heralds should not identify themselves, but I'm aware others may feel differently. (By identify, I mean say who their main characters are.)

[Creme]

Just so I'm very clear, we are not going to have Heralds identified in game in any way.

There are probably very few players that post on these forums, who's in-game identities are not known.

[Vermithraxx]

Two random thoughts:

1.) To preserve anonymity, Heralds should be given a second forum login/account. If they choose to use it, problem solved.

2.) In the EQ2 guide program, the one place a guide couldn't do their job was on their own server. They got assigned anyplace else. Leaving Blight out of the permutation, any Chaos volunteer would Herald on Order, while the Order peeps would Herald for Chaos. Perhaps this would slow down some of the faction/banning wars happening?

[Steelclaw]

Well, it's good to know that some of the concerns I brought up were already thought about, though this seems to warrant further discussion.

Skip down to section 3 if you're in a rush – that's the important part.

1. After some changes regarding Herald identity, we have an interesting situation here. If the identity of a Herald is revealed, they are subject to (the bad stuff) that prompted this change in policy. If their identity is kept a secret, how do you expect the players to trust them?

As Velea says:

There is a level of trust implied between those who are Heralds and the developers, just as there is between Herald and the community.

2. As for community involvement in the selection process, notice that I didn't say anything about a vote. Involvement can be something like “This is the list of candidates. Send your comments to ([email protected]).”. Those comments are taken into consideration in the selection process.
A lack of comments doesn't say much, a positive comment says a little, though a negative one should warrant investigation.


3. Considering the controversy and risk (however small it is) surrounding this program, I ask the following:
What are your goals and requirements? (for the program, not the participants)
What problem(s) are you trying to solve?
Is it really necessary? (or, “Are these really problems that exist?”)
If so, what are some other ways to solve them?

I've had experience doing software design involving groups of people. There's always someone who comes up with a “feature” they want to include and fight tooth and nail for it. The group goes around in circles for hours arguing over the merits, risks, overhead, implementation, credibility of the person who proposed the feature, intelligence of another group member, intelligence of said group member's mother... Well, you get it. This continues until some incarnation of the first three questions are answered and everyone agrees on the answers. Only then do things move forward, sometimes producing a more favorable alternative.

This discussion of the Herald program is starting to sound like it's getting dragged down in the same kind of loop. Try to answer the first three questions, and let's see what happens.

[LOVWYRM]

again I agree nearly 100%, Steelclaw

[C`gan]

Well, to save face and anonymity, what about a Herald-only account? Completely different character, but possibly a copy of the person's choice character, at least in level and abilities, with different features so that the herald does not look like their actual character. The people would not have to be losing any time as their actual characters by having the influx of player requests. Set them up in a channel, as mentioned before, or possibly have the character be available with some sort of office hours. Example, Questor Herald would be in Dalimond on Wednesdays from 3-5 AM PST.

I think I had this sort of posting about this type of thing with EI/PME/NGW's program as well.

[Pharcellus]

Unfortunately, AE-***-Tulga-***-Virtrium has a long history of not understanding the concept of "community management", and things don't seem to be improving in that regard. The whole Herald thing sounds like a solution looking for a problem to me. So, you want to pattern something related to CM based on concepts from other games which have worked for them (or not)?

Personally, as a herald or other player/volunteer staff, I wouldn't worry about perceived this and apparent that. As long as the job is well-defined, and there is a very active conduit for reporting improper staff behavior, the players should have confidence that their concerns are being addressed properly. Can Virtrium do that? Honestly, I doubt it; not without going to outside consultation as most ideas are still coming from the same sources which caused the deficiencies in the first place, and are proving to be quite inbred by design.

I would strongly suggest more stringent review of this new policy/plan before putting it into place, lest we end up with another useless focus group, hated on by everyone.