Wake up and read and act on what the community really wants...

Wake up, read and act on what the community really wants...

Foreword: Prepare for a wall of text, it's long and hefty, but comes from the hearts and minds of your users (Yes I know, not from you, oh, and not from you either, but you know what, gtfo of this topic then. There's plenty that do think this way, but are afraid of their account and possible represailles).
And to some of you butcrawlers who are thinking of replying here with "It's not true", and "This is over the top" and other bullshit that this forum and it's staff is doing great, don't bother to reply, because this post and I will probably not be around long enough to read it, and if so then I don't care.

Thanks, LiquidAtoR.

To all those who this concerns (or fits the description or thinks it's about him/her)...

Well, after evaluating the quality of this forum and some of it's members I will probably get a "gesperrt" status after this post, but frankly I don't care anymore.

To the Developers, Staff, and so called other Leaders of this community:

WAKE UP!

Don't get me wrong, but guys (and girls if any), really, wake the fuck up! Go sit around the table each week and discuss items, issues and other stuff that goes on in this community. Don't turn a deaf ear when it doesn't suit you, or keep your inbox full so people can't contact you when there are issues, and when one staff member says ok do it, and 5 minutes later the next staffmember deletes it all or closes it with some standard reply. Or making totally useless posts instead of an answer etc etc.
It really is too much to mention what doesn't go right, or doesn't go at all.

And don't think I don't know what I'm talking about. I ran a community of over 100.000 real members on my own servers (unfortunately some official instances decided it was no longer tolerated and shut me down), but I know what it's like. If you don't listen, you WILL loose the goodwill of this community.
Loose the goodwill and you loose it all (or maybe alot but not all).

Now I'm gonna use a figure of speech, but it's the easiest way to explain it, so don't go freaking out over it (or do, and see if I care!)...

As I see it the staff is a whole bunch of mini dictators, under the rule of the big boss. And each is doing things their way, makes up the rules as they go, as it suits them. There are absolutely no guidelines (besides the general acceptable bahaviour rules, which this community provides for, and NOT the staff who should). It's one of the basic things to provide, a ruleset, guidelines, a FAQ etc. Is there any here? None, or if it's there is, it's so damn good hidden that you probably have to make a wrong search to land there (or maybe it got flushed out with the forum prune).

And yes, you ARE making progress with HB. Looking at HB from the startpoint of this all, it has improved alot (although there are also new issues and bugs, but that's how it goes). However it's not stable (and don't give me that bull that part a + b is stable, but c, d and the rest is not, means it's not stable if those features are in it). Changes in markups are inevitable with progress, but for the love of god, let people know up front so they can start making the changes needed to profiles, CC's and sorts. I know you do this on a select base, but like the QuestOrder release, 90% of the profiles on the forums were spitting out errors (not mentioning the CC's that also stopped working). Personally I think that's not the way it should go, and with me quite a few others think the same way.

Just a few suggestions:

1) Go sit around the virtual table with ALL the staff (No exceptions, you don't have time, you make time. You can't make time, then you should not be in the staff in the first place) and make a roadmap for this all. Discuss and agree upon a ruleset, make a FAQ (for use of GB/HB/Forum/Chat, get all the "tools" any normal forum shouldn't be without like the mentioned FAQ, a General Behaviour Ruleset etc for the users, BUT also the ruleset for the (super)moderators, what can and can't be done. How to act on certain behaviour. Get a unified ruleset, and leave just a littlebit of room for improvisation in special cases.

2) Get some more staff to man the forums, the chat and other places that require some form of moderation. I'm sure there's enough suitable people in all timezones out there who are fit for the job of a normal moderator (the right person on the right place).

3) Get a project manager who is NOT involved in the coding of HB/GB. That will make things go smoother (thank you who suggested me this, you know who you are).

4) Read the posts from users who make suggestions. Ofcourse you can't implement them all, or some suggestions are plain useless, or already planned. If they are, let it know. Don't just ignore it. Yeah I know, aint life a bitch. Hey, guess what. You exist because we pay for it. Is it too much to ask for a bit of attention in return. Problem solving is often done by forum members, support and help too. Geezz, even the FAQ is written by forum members and so are the profiles and custom CC's. All you supply is the program and some basic CC's, nearly all the rest is done by the community, for free or donations, and some work is paid for (like private profiles, plugins and maybe even some CC's for all that I know).
We are not all gifted in programming, creating profiles, plugins, CC's even if we would like to or try to.
Some of us know more than others, some are happy they can find the on/off switch on the PC, but we are all customers here.

It's not only the stuff you like to do. You will also have to deal with things you don't like to do. It's like real life. You can't always do what you want to do (and if you can, well, then you are one of the lucky few I guess).
Take your responsibilities, and do the things you took upon yourself to do.
But if you want to do it, then do it right, transparant and all so everyone knows what's going on, what's planned, and what's going to happen.

Thanks for your time reading this all.
I look forward to any constructive replies if this post lives long enough to see the daylight (or I take my leave for the period of the imposed silence and see you around afterwards).

Regards, LiquidAtoR.

 

/sign (filler)

 

you realise it's spelt lose rather than loose right? It's strange that you say this is what the community wants, when in reality I see different posts wanting different things everyday. No matter what you do you can never make everyone happy. I personally am happy paying my 25 euros and having the forum run as it is now. After all if they employ more people and spend more time doing other things the end result will be an increase in costs of the product.

 

Thanks...

Thank you, English is not my main language, but I get by without a spellchecker. As long as people understand me I'm happy, spell errors or not.

You are hitting the nail on the head saying it's always something else what the community wants.
However there is a difference to the "unique" requests of single users, and requests that keep returning, but are being ignored.
For example as Zoooom requested, a simple overview of changes made in the clients. It's not only him that requested it, but it has passed the revue a few times, getting ignored.

You miss a point here. Unless I am mistaking the (super)moderators don't get paid for this. It's a voluntary job, unless they may have the benefit of a free GB/HB key to use. But aside that it's unpaid and in general unthankful work (you get the piss from both sides).

 

I tend to feel like there are no guidelines laid down for staff from the boss.

And somtimes the left hand doesnt know what the right hand is doing but all thinks considered its going along quite well.

Maybe a suggestion forum should be created?

Im actually quite impressed and happy with how things have come. But then again I live in my own little world on the forum where I check my messages, check my two threads, and log off. I dont do much else.

 

I've read your post 3 times now.

Any chance of a 1 line reply saying exactly what you'd like?

 

/signed. I Completely agree with this.

People need to wake up and get off their Elite horse and listen to the Community.
I will stop here as I do not want to rant.

For English not being a native language, you did Very well! On first read, I think the only error was the one pointed out. Haha. People will use ANYTHING to discredit someone.

Cheers mate!

 

You realize it's spelled.... ahhh NM

 

A 1 line reply will be kind of hard to create. Lots of small things add up to be big in the end.
I think if you would like it in 1 line it would be easier to do it in 1 word.
I think the keyword is Communication, in the broadest sense of the word itself.
Not only towards the users, but also between yourselves as staff.
That's one of the main things I have been missing here from the start on the forums.

As Mordd wrote

A suggestion forum would be a good start for us as usergroup to relay the suggestions.

 

One's British, and the other is American.
Get over it.
Americans aren't the centre of the world.
It's realise and spelt for a lot of Europeans here.

 

A 1 line reply will be kind of hard to create. Lots of small things add up to be big in the end.
I think if you would like it in 1 line it would be easier to do it in 1 word.
I think the keyword is Communication, in the broadest sense of the word itself.
Not only towards the users, but also between yourselves as staff.
That's one of the main things I have been missing here from the start on the forums.

As Mordd wrote

A suggestion forum would be a good start for us as usergroup to relay the suggestions.

Thanks...

Please stay on-topic. Thanks.

 

deleted for topic preservation...

 

/agreed

I think it all boils down to "start treating your customers as such, we aren't donating for some open source project, we are paying customers that want a fully working product EACH AND EVERY RELEASE. The product in fact being the engine + the CC's + the actual profiles. For the moment we are stuck with the choice of an old v1 with has NO recent cc's or profiles and a v2 which is beta and a lot of problems."

oh and for those that think correcting spelling mistakes is cool, .... ye, you know what I'm saying.

*peace*

 

I agree and disagree with your statement here.
I agree with the fact we are paying for a product (it's not open source donations as you stated).
So we are allowed to expect certain things from the product (and if it's not to your liking you can ask for a refund as far as I'm aware).

I disagree with the statement that there's no fully working product.
There is as you say the V1 of HB, which does work and doesn't bug out (at least I didn't notice it).
However all CC's that were available for it are either discarded now (there was a forum pruning) or out of date.
And since the convenient meshing done by HB2 noone wants to go and make meshes anymore.
However you can't expect a full working product when a release is not out of Beta.
The problem is the tagging of the release as [Stable], which is a communication error. Parts are deemed stable, and parts are not.

What I further noticed is that a release running flawless on 1 system, gives problems on the next system.

 

I'm not gonna quote your first post because it's kinda big, but I wouldn't have said better.

Organization is the keyword, seems that people are developing as they think instead of planning it, questorder should be released since day 0, and that was just an example.

Don't put new features if the old ones still bug, there was 1 week having a Loot bug where you didn't loot at all and after killing 5 mobs you were going to pick the first one, that should be fixed in a day, specialy if the previous release didn't had this bug, more releases but smaller ones.

How is it possible to release 1.954 with a new feature that every single person that turned it on the bot didn't move? how could this escape to dev's eyes?

How is it possible to not think about mounts when navigation system was developed, it tries to walk into some places that mount gets stuck because of it's size? I'm pretty sure that Dev's aren't that dumb, otherwise HB never existed, so please plan your work, at the end of the day you will have wasted the same ammount of time more efficiently.

 

Since I talk to hawker alot, mainly I talk to him he doesnt talk back much I do know there is a main goal in mind with each release but with 4 people working on the same project with their own bits of code going into it, sometimes it does seem things break more.

Maybe we could have a beta tester class? Those interested in testing the latest and greatest would have the chance to compare it to the release build and that would give the staff extra input needed before the masses get ahold of it?

 

I like this idea of Beta class, For Closed those members who contribute a large amount by adding CC's/Profiles/Plugin's and such should be invited whilst letting others to catch up with Open beta before the client is fully released to take over the latest version.

I know it's gonna have bugs, but for a time the bug was so significant it brought most profiles down for a day or two.

 

Organization is a good one too as keyword.

However Development is also a creative process. Things get added along the way. This is how you expand a program. It's possible to make a roadmap, but there's always unprecedented things that get added along the way which unfortunately may require major changes.

However I agree with your second part of your post where you state to first work out the existing bugs before adding new features. Make it stable and then move on to the next part.
On the other hand it's also the community that pushes the development team to deliver new features which in the end turn out to work in best case, be buggy or not working at all.

Maybe there could be an option to work like Apoc has his druid. Make a downloadpackage/checkout option to run so called "daily builds" or even "bleeding edge" products. At least those that use it (and know how to use it) know they are gonna encounter bugs. The average user will stay with the bigger releases on the forums. Those that want to know what's in store or test new functions download/checkout a development build.

That would be a good idea, but make sure you have beta testers that know what the are doing as Crucia mentioned, and not some john doe that just wants the latest thing.

 

Hey John Doe is nice, what you on about?

 

The problem with svn repositories and bleeding edge releases would be that there would be no CC and profiles to test the new features. Unless the devs provided rudimentary versions and left it to the community to make more complex ones later.