The "Closed dev group" thing.

[Prefontaine]

I've been away for a bit now, couple months actually, and there seems to be some craziness going on involving the closed group and what goes on in there and who's allowed in and what not. First, the original group was comprised of people Sheepy selected that made active quality constructive posts/ideas on how to improve the game, this list also included people whom were suggested to be added. Sheepy asked in the IRC game channel at one point early on I believe, it was also brought up to some extent on the old radio show. After the original wave of people it became a who should I add sort of group, and who should be added was decided by suggestions from the already existing player base. The reason for that is because otherwise there wouldn't be a point to it, if it wasn't it some fashion exclusive. I don't believe I've ever suggested anyone, and didn't really care, I know a few people were kicked out as well.

 

So here's the reason why it's a closed group. It's easier to control. Players who don't follow the rules, who make things personal, game political, or are pursuing an idea (or against an idea) because they have an axe to grind, that !@#$ isn't allowed. In the public forum it's a pissing contest sometimes because you have the peanut gallery watching and people puff their chests out. Also it's more concise. I couldn't stand reading the suggestion forum a lot of the time because of the !@#$ that went on in there, the stupid stuff was mounting. This let players find decent ideas, pick them out of the populous and then refine them with the closed group. Sometimes this happens in both the private and public threads, I know I've made multiple threads in the different forums for the same topic in the past. The group is supposed to be comprised of players who have been in these games and understand mechanics and have put a fair amount of their time in to helping the well being of the game. Here's the important part, just because you are not in that group does not mean your don't meet those qualifications, it's not a slight on you. 

 

The lash-back from the most recent changes and the troll threads about cap this and cap that are a prime example of why the dev group is a good thing, because childish behavior like that would result in your removal from the section, so unless you want full perma forum bans for getting out of line in the suggestion thread then you can't keep them out and police the area properly. 

 

I know why I was added to the group. It was because I at nauseous levels made suggestions for the game, big ones, small ones, public ones, private ones, radio ones. I wouldn't shut up with constructive ideas for the game and defended the hell out of them, debated the hell out of them, an adapted them as suggestions became solid ideas. You want to be apart of the dev group, do the same, put some serious time and thought into trying to help the game. Hell, form your own dev group with a small group of people, bounce ideas off each other then present it in an organized manner and go from there. Nothing's stopping you. Sheepy and the current dev team (at least some of them) will listen, and create a private topic to discuss further and build upon the idea, and hopefully include whomever presented the idea into the conversation. 

 

Is it a perfect system? Nope. Is it a good thing to have? Yep. You think your voice isn't being heard? Make it heard. Acting childish isn't the way. Lashing out isn't the way. Something important to remember along the way that I myself am guilty of getting lost in when I'm passionate about one of my ideas. It's Sheepy's game. Chill. 

 

 

 

Edited July 11, 2015 by Judge Dredd

[Pax]

I pretty much agree with everything you said but I feel like there's plenty of people that are complaining just for the sake of complaining, and they'll continue to do so.

It's also worth noting that the group is hardly as influential as people seem to think it is. Everyone is treating it like the whole new spy suggestion was crafted by our group because it benefits us, when in reality the only thing we influenced was the spy assassination damage because there was a topic about it a couple days before the big thread. Everything else, we got blindsided with at almost the same time as the public forums, and started talking about at more or less the same time. The difference being that while everywhere else went on this huge freakout and made few to no suggestions for adjustment, the dev group talked about what could be improved and how they thought those changes would work out. Sometimes it's useful to just have a group of knowledgeable people who will stay calm about things and only focus on what they think would be good for the game.

 

Right now, our only really active topics are that proposed spy changes thread (which is also a thread that we suggested Sheepy cross-post and make public), the "suggest new members", two threads talking about different ways of rolling out ideas publicly as well as in the dev group so that this doesn't happen again, and one where someone suggested anonymous ads and we basically agreed that would probably lead to people being dicks because they were anonymous. We're hardly crafting a revolution of the world there.

[ELPINCHAZO]

also,there were MANY different suggestions made.These are the ones sheepy felt best about in the end. The dev group discusses them but it isn't like some democracy going on there. Sheepy is the dev tyrant.

[Crowley]

Where is the full list of this 'closed' group? 

 

I would like to see the names/nations of every member making decisions suggestions for the betterment of the game. 

[Pax]

I'm fine with people knowing that I'm in the group, but I don't know who all is comfortable with it and who is not.

 

Since you asked, and I'm pretty sure plenty of people want to know, I started a poll asking people if they were comfortable with it being listed publicly. I'm pretty sure most of our members are up front about being in there, but I just don't want to post about others if they aren't okay with it - particularly because some people who don't like the dev group are using it as an excuse to treat the members badly.

Edited July 11, 2015 by Pax

[Clarke]

I pretty much agree with everything you said but I feel like there's plenty of people that are complaining just for the sake of complaining, and they'll continue to do so.

 

It's also worth noting that the group is hardly as influential as people seem to think it is. Everyone is treating it like the whole new spy suggestion was crafted by our group because it benefits us, when in reality the only thing we influenced was the spy assassination damage because there was a topic about it a couple days before the big thread. Everything else, we got blindsided with at almost the same time as the public forums, and started talking about at more or less the same time. The difference being that while everywhere else went on this huge freakout and made few to no suggestions for adjustment, the dev group talked about what could be improved and how they thought those changes would work out. Sometimes it's useful to just have a group of knowledgeable people who will stay calm about things and only focus on what they think would be good for the game.

 

You must be out of the loop in your group because Sheepy said the changes were designed with the help of the group over some time.

 

 

We've been doing a lot of discussion about spy changes lately, and I think we've come up with an appropriate fix to everyone's woes. Here is outlined a list of changes that are to be in the near future.

 

We've been working on this for weeks, and have been honing and finely tuning these changes into what most out our little dev group thinks is acceptable across the board. These should all be benevolent changes that improve the game and will making spying a unique and less war-like facet of the game.

Unless Sheepy is lying.

But anyway the discussion you had in your private group is vastly different than the public forums because there was no room for a discussion, the stance of the update thread was "Some people came up with these ideas and now everyone in the game has to deal with it". 

[Pax]

I did in fact miss a topic about the spy thing because it was further down and I got the title mixed up with another thread in the group. Which is a pretty big mistake on my part, willing to own up to that. However, from the looks of that topic sheepy made some suggestions and the major changes I'm seeing that were changed were the reduced assassination damages, raised refunds on people over 50 spies, and hiding spies killed/captured. There's a lot of discussion on hiding spies from public view and all, but that will be talked about in the future and there was too much debate for us to think it should be released without more discussion. Again, my mistake.

 

And I do think that the public should be able to suggest changes, but like Sheepy said in his thread

 

I'm making sure there's nothing horrifically wrong with any of these changes before I make them

 

If people want changes to be made to a suggestion, talking about what's wrong with it is a good way to do so. It's not like everything is being ignored just because it's in public, there's a lot of discussion about this going on in our group. And like I said above, we're talking about different ways to have public forums weigh in on major changes, it's not like we're going to be running a tyranny here. 

Edited July 11, 2015 by Pax

[Clarke]

Well reasons were already giving why capping spies is a bad idea by numerous people including me, but alas Sheepy should be already thinking long and hard before doing that now.

If he doesn't change his mind I suppose someone can make a thread with a list of pros and cons of putting a cap on spies. 

[Pax]

That would actually be pretty helpful. A lot of the discussion in the main thread is buried under the discussion of the dev group, a thread where people just discussed the pros and cons of the changes might lead to a better result.

 

Edit: Maybe talking about it here would be good? http://politicsandwar.com/forums/index.php?/topic/7335-spy-cap/

Edited July 11, 2015 by Pax