A system with two committees

[WildX]

The current TMWC is not working. Here's a possible new system TMW could adopt:

Two separate committees:

Developer Committee - Meritocracy (anyone who produces good content regularly is appointed a Dev).

Produces content for TMW;
Has full decision power over test servers and everything that does not directly affect players in any way.

Game Master Committee - Democracy (the community elects each GM, as it's always been).
Enforces the rules;
Represents all players and takes decisions based on everyone's opinions;
Has full and final decision power over everything that affects players directly, including content updates on the main server;
Approves member of the Developers Committee.
This gives GMs a lot more power over the project and an official role of player representatives. This may not appeal to all current GMs, but no one ever said that the position of GMs would be eternal and always unchanged.


This is just a first thought, I'm sure there's flaws that I haven't noticed.

[Ablu]

Hell no. Please less bureaucracy than more. We do not need two fighting parties vetoing each other.

The players do not decide about the game. The people who contribute to it do.

The players are simply the ones who cry the most.

Regards,
Ablu

[Silent Dawn]

...including content updates on the main server; Approves member of the Developers Committee.

GMs are not forced to know stuff about coding and development. They dont need to have knowledges on that to do their jobs.
I can talk for myself that i know nothing about code. I'm more into the science field...
No way i would be in charge of content updates and approving new developers. Makes no sense to me.

[WildX]

...including content updates on the main server; Approves member of the Developers Committee.

GMs are not forced to know stuff about coding and development. They dont need to have knowledges on that to do their jobs.
I can talk for myself that i know nothing about code. I'm more into the science field...
No way i would be in charge of content updates and approving new developers. Makes no sense to me.

You wouldn't be in charge of content updates, you would be in charge of making sure that those updates are approved of by the players, to prevent things like the recent code update disaster to happen. The actual update is the devs'job

[WildX]

Hell no. Please less bureaucracy than more. We do not need two fighting parties vetoing each other.

The players do not decide about the game. The people who contribute to it do.

The players are simply the ones who cry the most.

Regards,
Ablu

They can't veto each other as they administer different things. The only thing that could be vetoed would be an unwanted code update on the main server.

[AnonDuck]

The players do not decide about the game. The people who contribute to it do.

The players are simply the ones who cry the most.

Regards,
Ablu

Heh, aint that the truth. It's not like development isn't an open book (and lately friendly environment) if they want to contribute and actually change things. The children just want free candy without working for it.

Not saying player feedback isn't important though. If something sucks the developers need to know so they can work on it. Players also have good ideas to share. The in-game developer meetings seem to be helping with this. The forum is just a bunch of whining self-entitled brats for the most part, best to just give up on that. Most everyone except myself already has, if you haven't noticed.

I'm trying very hard to get things settled down enough on the forums where the players can contribute usefully, but all this fist-shaking at strawmen and requests for uneeded red-tape-making changes is making it rather impossible. People just need to learn to talk to eachother instead of screaming and waving around knives all the time. It's like some really bad kung-fu movie or something when I picture it in my head.

(Cue long posts flaming me with a bunch of fallacies for speaking my mind)

[Silent Dawn]

...including content updates on the main server; Approves member of the Developers Committee.

GMs are not forced to know stuff about coding and development. They dont need to have knowledges on that to do their jobs.
I can talk for myself that i know nothing about code. I'm more into the science field...
No way i would be in charge of content updates and approving new developers. Makes no sense to me.

You wouldn't be in charge of content updates, you would be in charge of making sure that those updates are approved of by the players, to prevent things like the recent code update disaster to happen. The actual update is the devs'job

Yes, i understood:) But even so, i think it would be quite hard for GMs to keep track who would be happy/unhappy with a future content update. Honestly, sometimes not even the GMs know what is going to be released on updates (which reminds me the other topic about lack of communication between Devs and GMs).

I encourage people to use more the test server in these cases. They can test what is going to be released and based on that give an opinion about it. After, whether they decide to talk with the GMs or directly with Devs it's up to them.

[Hello=)]

The players do not decide about the game. The people who contribute to it do.

Yes. And this way TMW would never turn into anyhow good and decent game. Most of devs don't even play it and have very strange ideas about RPGs in general. And "own sh*t does not smells" effect is here as well. So from my observation TMW suffers from quite hostile climate to players, some long-standing issues and overall, quite many people were discouraged from contributing to project due to poor treatment. Players are not your personal lab rats. Furthermore, such treatment discourages people from doing something useful for project. And since players do not like to be your lab rats and treated like it happens today, it can turn out you would be kings of EMPTY world. Ah, special greetings to o11c and his mumblings about "quality". You see, bunch of arrogant devs who does not plays game at all and discourages players from taking part in process, giving feedback and so on would be unable to make good game for obvious reasons. And I can assure you nobody comes to any server to see your arrogance and ignorance, as well as to face gazillions of strange issues and dumb workarounds. So I think such policy like o11c/ablu prefer, haves potential to turn whole TMW into ManaSource #2. Let's admit for some reasons you don't want to use ManaServ and then even declared ManaPlus your default client. And I can admit that unlike TMW devs, ManaPlus author actually PLAYED this game and far more pleasant to deal with than at least some of TMW devs (attutude of some TMW devs could be really discouraging). I bet openness to communication helped 4144 to make his client "best in it's class". But some people are unable to learn such a simple things and step over own arrogance.

The players are simply the ones who cry the most.

And there is reason behind that. If you land some stuff they dislike and there is no way to change that, churn and grief happens. But ok, if you want to be considered as arrogant and ignorant entity, feel free to behave like you do. And then do not complain players dislike or even hate you. That's what you possibly deserve for such attitude where I can only see arrogance and ignorance.

[veryape]

Hell no. Please less bureaucracy than more. We do not need two fighting parties vetoing each other.

I think there has to be a balancing act between bureaucracy and player input. Perhaps the best way to bring more of a player perspective is to take the Testing-group more seriously and give the testing leader a place on the tmwc as an adviser. However the whole debate about player representatives are a bit too cumbersome to pull off imo. Sure I love the idea, but from my perspective our community already have hard times to make their voices heard on the forums and how many GM polls have not died down because lack of votes?

I think we need to stop being too utopian about things and think more in ways of what is actually feasible. I think that the players needs to be represented in some way, either we should simply add the "player representative role" as a work description for the GM's or as I stated above really take the tester group more seriously and give the tester group leader (a new role) a more direct role to play towards the tmwc. As of now the town-sitting of developers are already making things better because they are more easily accessible to the players of the game.

The players do not decide about the game. The people who contribute to it do.

The players are simply the ones who cry the most.

In the long run the players do decide if the game is successful or not, just in the same way as a consumer decides what company is successful or not. If they cannot get their input thru to the TMWC and the developers they will start voting with their feet, moving on to other games or staying put because they like things. I think that the feedback loop is instrumental for this games well-being in the long run.

So to sum things up.

TMWC are not the game, neither are the devs or the players.. They all together are the game and they need to work together for this game to become as good as possible.

[o11c]

either we should simply add the "player representative role" as a work description for the GM's

It already is.

You know where the only shortcoming of this component is? The fact that players *don't* go to the GMs with their problems. Or rather, they don't go to them with any problems right now, they did it plenty 2 months ago.

Call me a pessimist, but I have a hard time believing that most of the players posting complaints about structure on the forums are actually interested in helping. If they were, why wouldn't they be following the procedure that they are asking for, that we already provide?

or as I stated above really take the tester group more seriously and give the tester group leader (a new role) a more direct role to play towards the tmwc.

Currently we only have about 6 active testers. I'm not sure how well that would work out. And I don't recall any tester showing leadership qualities without becoming involved in development.

All these requests about adding people to the TMWC to represent the players? The moment they are added, they are no longer considered player representatives. You can see this most clearly with the attitude toward GMs during vs after an election.

[Nard]

either we should simply add the "player representative role" as a work description for the GM's

It already is.

It is not, and it has been said many times that they were not, a long time before the "player representative" suggestion was first made. I
"Player representative in TMWC" is a suggestion, not a complaint. It is made in order to make the relations between game development and gamers as good as possible. It comes as a complement to testers. Please remind that the testers group idea was not that much welcomed by all developers at the time it was suggested first.

And I don't recall any tester showing leadership qualities without becoming involved in development

Player representative is not "player leader" just a playing player who can be honest and fearless enough to report players feelings, and is close enough to them to bring a possible or probable player reaction about new ideas. A kind of "gamer psychologist" substitute if you prefer. The goal is not to bring more problems into TMWC but to prevent them before they can occur. This is why I am not sure that it would need to be polled as a GM, nor be a permanent member of TMWC, but in any case, considered as an advisor. I think and know that there were and still are testers who were (are) not involved in development, though many of them can understand development things.