Application Update, Round 2
Oct 1, 2016 9:52:01 GMT -5
Kokuou Munashii, Ichiro Tsubaki, and 7 more like this
Post by Consequence on Oct 1, 2016 9:52:01 GMT -5
So I had a full day of talks, chats, posts, and reflection. I've slept on it. And I have the following thoughts for discussion and disclosure.
1) There is a high degree of discomfort for "Quincy" as the sole mortal group, but a high degree of comfort for "Human"
I can explain, to death, why I chose to present these groups the way that I did but none of that is even a little bit important. There was some very good discussion yesterday in the wake of the announcement that included both compromise and debate and the consensus seems to be that people are "fine" with the Usergroup being "Humans". This is something I can accommodate, and we can return to the system we had previously where we keep our diligence by labeling what "type" of Human the character is beneath the portrait. For example, anyone who would be a Quincy will appear in the "Human" group, and then beneath their portrait in italic text, it'd say "Quincy".
If this bullet point survives the day, I'll implement this tomorrow.
2) While I have been intent on fixing a problem, the 'cure' is not wanted.
This is a complex problem for me as a person, so I hope you'll bear with me while I try to explain. I am the Site Owner. It is my focus, my goal, to do whatever I can to both keep the lights on and keep our member base growing. I want butts in the chairs, making characters, making posts, and I want them to continue to do so for as long as possible so that all of you have some fun. That's it. That's my goal in its entirety and I sincerely hope you believe that. I may not personally enjoy the aspects of "Variant play", to paraphrase the situation, but that most certainly does not invalidate the people who do.
It's likely that I never will 'get it'.
But thanks to the passionate pleas and infinite patience of a handful of people I both trust and respect, I believe I understand their value to those who like to play them. Why, despite every systemic move that's been made to add a neon light to their "difficulty", or barrier stuck into the road, people continue to be both enthusiastic about them and eager to create them. And why the membership of this user group never flirts with the same flat line that Hollows have been embracing. Or at least, I understand it more so now than just the other day.
I'm sorry that I forced this onto the community without broadening my perspective.
If this bullet point survives the day, I will be removing any barriers to creating a Mortal/Human/Fullbring such as needing special approval, and I'll be keeping the skill variety. Variants will continue to be defined under their new highly niche term, so things like Bounts and Mod Souls, and will require a request, but this will not stop Joe Fullbring from being created.
3) It's probably time to canonize the KSN so Humans have the same leg up that I keep bitching about the other races having.
And if the Quincy regime continued to solidify, I'll be more than happy to canonize the apparent structure and presentation. Although, both of these things forever and always will remain in the hands of the Players. If the KSN crumbles or the Quincy regime fades back to 2 people, there would be no sense in systemically supporting them.
4) It's time to take a risk and let the community put its money where its collective mouth is.
This is something I have floated past just a couple community members.
I would offer to create a volunteer group of people in the community that I post my raw patch notes for, 5-7 days before they go live. This group would have access to a private board not seen by other members that included these notes, and they are invited to provide feedback and ideas in response.
Participation in this group would be wholly volunteer, and no vetoes or restrictions would be allowed from me or staff in any shape or fashion. There would only be two requirements to this group:
First, you do not discuss the patches with anyone who is not staff, or not in the group. Spreading misinformation is EXTREMELY dangerous in the context of this setting and if you cowboy off and spread rumors about incoming changes, I will find you and I will smite you. If I have to explain why, don't volunteer.
Second, once you join, participation would be mandatory. If you fail to offer meaningful, actionable, or insightful feedback to an update then you would be removed. If you respond to something with just one post of "looks good", then you're out. If you don't respond at all, you're out. If you're responding and we don't make a single correction or change based on your opinion, then you're still in. The point here is that if you want to just rubber stamp things and be in a cool kids club, I will not tolerate that and this group is not for you. (And obviously if NO ONE found a problem with something, I would not force you to create issues to comment on, so, hopefully this doesnt come off unreasonable)
What are your thoughts?
I have adjustments I would like to make to the Milestone process incoming in a couple weeks, and this is a good avenue to introduce this group.
1) There is a high degree of discomfort for "Quincy" as the sole mortal group, but a high degree of comfort for "Human"
I can explain, to death, why I chose to present these groups the way that I did but none of that is even a little bit important. There was some very good discussion yesterday in the wake of the announcement that included both compromise and debate and the consensus seems to be that people are "fine" with the Usergroup being "Humans". This is something I can accommodate, and we can return to the system we had previously where we keep our diligence by labeling what "type" of Human the character is beneath the portrait. For example, anyone who would be a Quincy will appear in the "Human" group, and then beneath their portrait in italic text, it'd say "Quincy".
If this bullet point survives the day, I'll implement this tomorrow.
2) While I have been intent on fixing a problem, the 'cure' is not wanted.
This is a complex problem for me as a person, so I hope you'll bear with me while I try to explain. I am the Site Owner. It is my focus, my goal, to do whatever I can to both keep the lights on and keep our member base growing. I want butts in the chairs, making characters, making posts, and I want them to continue to do so for as long as possible so that all of you have some fun. That's it. That's my goal in its entirety and I sincerely hope you believe that. I may not personally enjoy the aspects of "Variant play", to paraphrase the situation, but that most certainly does not invalidate the people who do.
It's likely that I never will 'get it'.
But thanks to the passionate pleas and infinite patience of a handful of people I both trust and respect, I believe I understand their value to those who like to play them. Why, despite every systemic move that's been made to add a neon light to their "difficulty", or barrier stuck into the road, people continue to be both enthusiastic about them and eager to create them. And why the membership of this user group never flirts with the same flat line that Hollows have been embracing. Or at least, I understand it more so now than just the other day.
I'm sorry that I forced this onto the community without broadening my perspective.
If this bullet point survives the day, I will be removing any barriers to creating a Mortal/Human/Fullbring such as needing special approval, and I'll be keeping the skill variety. Variants will continue to be defined under their new highly niche term, so things like Bounts and Mod Souls, and will require a request, but this will not stop Joe Fullbring from being created.
3) It's probably time to canonize the KSN so Humans have the same leg up that I keep bitching about the other races having.
And if the Quincy regime continued to solidify, I'll be more than happy to canonize the apparent structure and presentation. Although, both of these things forever and always will remain in the hands of the Players. If the KSN crumbles or the Quincy regime fades back to 2 people, there would be no sense in systemically supporting them.
4) It's time to take a risk and let the community put its money where its collective mouth is.
This is something I have floated past just a couple community members.
I would offer to create a volunteer group of people in the community that I post my raw patch notes for, 5-7 days before they go live. This group would have access to a private board not seen by other members that included these notes, and they are invited to provide feedback and ideas in response.
Participation in this group would be wholly volunteer, and no vetoes or restrictions would be allowed from me or staff in any shape or fashion. There would only be two requirements to this group:
First, you do not discuss the patches with anyone who is not staff, or not in the group. Spreading misinformation is EXTREMELY dangerous in the context of this setting and if you cowboy off and spread rumors about incoming changes, I will find you and I will smite you. If I have to explain why, don't volunteer.
Second, once you join, participation would be mandatory. If you fail to offer meaningful, actionable, or insightful feedback to an update then you would be removed. If you respond to something with just one post of "looks good", then you're out. If you don't respond at all, you're out. If you're responding and we don't make a single correction or change based on your opinion, then you're still in. The point here is that if you want to just rubber stamp things and be in a cool kids club, I will not tolerate that and this group is not for you. (And obviously if NO ONE found a problem with something, I would not force you to create issues to comment on, so, hopefully this doesnt come off unreasonable)
What are your thoughts?
I have adjustments I would like to make to the Milestone process incoming in a couple weeks, and this is a good avenue to introduce this group.
