A commentary on the "Upcoming changes..." thread
The “Upcoming Changes for dragons” thread looks like it didn't work out the way it was intended. (Well, I don't know what the intent was, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't to get the devs and players riled up.) However, some good seems to have come out of it. It acted as a catalyst to bring up areas of contention between players and developers, get some pent-up feelings out, and in some ways, better understand each other.
Now that there's a lull in activity, I want to step in and point out some of these 'lessons'. Some of these are from observation, some of them from personal experience. The latter was obtained through... should I say... unintended casualty. To those who I have angered, please take this as an apology – I'm still learning how to convey myself too.
Do note that in this thread, you're welcome to disagree with me, question my judgment, agree with me, share your own experiences, and even help revise my interpretations. You may not, however, use this as an opportunity to vent your frustrations by non-constructively criticizing ('bashing') or outright insulting anyone -- players or developers. Let's try to keep this thread from going off topic, getting locked, or deleted. I know you can do it.
Oh... where to start?
First and foremost, developers are people with feelings. Like anyone else who enjoys their job, they take pride in their work and can become defensive of it. If you're discussing a hot topic, make sure it doesn't even remotely sound like an insult. That's a great way to earn negative karma (before anyone says it, karma is stored a signed 64-bit integer -- no rollover in your lifetime). How, then, does a player provide negative feedback? Good question. I used to think “Well, how would I react if this was directed at me?”, however, experience has shown that that isn't always reliable. So, I'll leave it to the devs to give examples of what they want and don't want to hear. (I grant said devs permission to use excerpts of my public and private communication with any members of the development team to use as an example, citation not required.)
Second, players are people with feelings too. They just have trouble conveying them. If there's a post that sounds like it's mis-directed, unclear, 'just whining', or hostile, ask before blowing it off or going on a tirade. (This is directed to both devs and fellow players.) “Did you mean to {say|imply}...?” doesn't come up very much. Sometimes you have to coax the message out in a dialog of properly worded questions (that can be answered with “yes” or “no”). Also, I do not see many, if any, posts that were made with hurtful intent. Don't be so quick to take offense -- it's not like you have to defend your honor.
Third, players are paranoid. (I'm not saying whether this is good or bad, I'm saying this attribute should be taken into consideration.) Each has their own idea of what makes playing Hori... Ista... uh... this game fun. Whenever there's a change, proposed change, or perceived change that looks like it might impinge on their idea of fun, they will assume the worst possible case and argue from that standpoint. Some of this reaction can be mitigated by providing specific details that include the values of any proposed changes, the degree of their finality, and some background reason for the change. Compare the following statements, which one sounds better? “We want to make Shield of Gold more useful since it looks under-utilized. We're thinking about changing it to do [this].” versus “Shield of Gold will now do [this]”.
Now, for some nitty-gritty.
I'm starting to think that all conflict can be reduced to expectations that were either not met, violated, or differed. That is, there's a problem because A expected B to do Q, but B felt it was okay to do 3.1415926535 instead.
In this case (referring back to the upcoming changes thread), it looks like there's two such instances:
The first is that the players expect to be given a say in issues regarding 'their play style'. In this case, even if the proposed modifications to GS were nowhere near final, they certainly sounded final. That means the players felt like they had no input in the decision, and by natural extension, raised opposition (“I didn't get to voice my opinion, I don't like it, therefore I shall oppose it!”).
The second, which I believe warrants its own discussion (in a different thread here (http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...d.php?p=184675)), is a differing expectation of ability. It's obvious that there's some disparity between what the developers think the limits of dragons should be and what the players think the limits of dragons should be. At least one dev has said GS sounds like an “I Win” button and the general consensus from the players who posted seems to be “We need it to survive certain types of fights”. Talk about polarization. Anyway, more on that in the thread linked above.
Finally, a bit of advice to everyone: Calm down. Zoom the camera out and look at the big picture first. Arguing over details without a frame of reference will get you nowhere but upset.
