Besides, the strongest precedent in the room is talking about changes here on the forums. I, and probably a lot of players, get the most Divine interaction through these forums and most of the times, where changes actually get triggered.
Edit: I'll take full responsibility for the pattern issue though. It is not something I considered when we first put this in and I continually said that I want you to be willing to report anything. It wasn't until that report and the admin consulted it that we determined that we do not want to set a precedent for that within this system. That's my fault, I'm sorry.
I appreciate the fact that you've said this, but I don't hold you personally responsible.
I'd like to really suggest that if you're going to have things you just don't want to do or reports aren't a way you want to handle things, that you put those reasons out in the open so we don't spend cycles doing what we think are QoL reports. Half of the reason I did what I did was so that there would be some sort of record of my request beyond a message to the Charites. We've asked for these sorts of things (new patterns) in posts on the Trademasters' Messageboard, and they don't tend to get added; in fact, the last thing I remember being added were Fascinators, and those were suggested by the Charites in a poll as opposed to being something a player posted, and it was several IRL years ago.
I guess my point is this: I saw this as a sign that the admin had listened to our complaints about Lusternia in Estarra's "What problems do you have and what can we do to make it better" megathread, but it seems like only combat reports are being taken seriously so far.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
I'm being put in a difficult spot and I feel like there is no understanding of our position here. I'm willing to continue to make adjustments to make the system better, I've been sold on the cycles idea and I'm willing to listen to other ideas as well. (There are also ideas I'm not sold on, such as people using the skill having more weight than people not using the skill when voting).
1) The old envoy system at least twice over the past few years was backed up 6+ months (with some reports even approved and then rejected) because we just didn't have time to focus on them. It got so backed up, that reporting was cut off each time to allow us to catch up.
2) It takes time. Plain and simple, it takes time, There needs to be time for players to consider and comment on it and there needs to be time for the admin to consider and comment on it. As a note, the admin, for the most part, won't even start considering it until it reaches the adminreview stage. The entire reason there is a threshold system is to reduce the amount of admin time spent on it.
3) We're going to critically look at each report and consider a multitude of things when looking at it. There's a variety of things we're going to look at and take into consideration. Votes and comments are just one aspect. Another is implementation time vs value returned. We just can't accept every report makes it through, it's just not feasible. That's how we get backed up for 6+ months and then complaints about that delay come in.
I think at this point, even if we add some changes like making it cyclical, we're still going to have a decently long time delay that is going to end up with reports rejected for a variety of reasons. I don't know that it is avoidable, but if you have ideas, I'm all ears.
Edit: I'll take full responsibility for the pattern issue though. It is not something I considered when we first put this in and I continually said that I want you to be willing to report anything. It wasn't until that report and the admin consulted it that we determined that we do not want to set a precedent for that within this system. That's my fault, I'm sorry.
The first time the admin read the report wasn't until it was in the
admin review? I feel like a brief read over during Consideration/Pending to see 'yes,
this is something we would allow via reports' would have been a given. As isn't the case, I feel that needs to be a part if you are not going to allow things - It doesn't need to be a full admin discussion, but a simple 30 seconds ('yes this is something that is code possible', 'this is something we don't want going through the envoy system').
On backups - if you are allowed to say, how much of this is caused by you having to do promos/other projects first? Right now, even despite the backups, it feels like the old system had a quicker turn around with admin input/decisions and kind of things that were accepted/rejected even if it took months for things to be coded.
Hello there! We just wanted to chime in re: patterns and reports.
First of all, we want to say upfront: yes, we are terrible when it comes to pattern requests. We are. We know this. And we're sorry about it.
We read every newspost you make and every message you send and we talk about all of them. The problem is, we don't respond to them. The intent behind not responding is that we don't want to give you a "nothing" answer. When we answer a query, we want to be able to give you the answer to your question or fix your problem.
With a pattern request, we often can't say anything other than "we'll think about this" - because it's not always within our capacity to add a pattern at any given time. We've talked about this before, but there are a lot of things we have to consider when adding patterns, including getting Estarra's approval for all of them.
But this just ends up giving the impression that we don't care about your pattern requests. So going forward we're going to make a point of always giving you a response, even if that is to say "we will bear this in mind but can't right now". We are sorry that we haven't done this in the past.
We did personally give input on the report in question and explained to Orael that we have a system in place for pattern submissions and that they should go through that method - which we stand by as a decision. But when there is such a significant problem with that method, we can totally understand reaching out to another way to try and sort it. We don't fault you for doing so, even if it isn't something we can ultimately accommodate.
In terms of any current pattern submissions, as we've mentioned elsewhere we don't actually have the capacity to look at them right now. We're currently working on a project for the design system as a whole that is taking up all of our focus. This project addresses a huge number of problems that people have with designing, and will ultimately mean that we will be freer to do things like focus on additional pattern requests. When we're near completion, we'll be giving you all the full details.
I'm being put in a difficult spot and I feel like there is no understanding of our position here. I'm willing to continue to make adjustments to make the system better, I've been sold on the cycles idea and I'm willing to listen to other ideas as well. (There are also ideas I'm not sold on, such as people using the skill having more weight than people not using the skill when voting).
1) The old envoy system at least twice over the past few years was backed up 6+ months (with some reports even approved and then rejected) because we just didn't have time to focus on them. It got so backed up, that reporting was cut off each time to allow us to catch up.
2) It takes time. Plain and simple, it takes time, There needs to be time for players to consider and comment on it and there needs to be time for the admin to consider and comment on it. As a note, the admin, for the most part, won't even start considering it until it reaches the adminreview stage. The entire reason there is a threshold system is to reduce the amount of admin time spent on it.
3) We're going to critically look at each report and consider a multitude of things when looking at it. There's a variety of things we're going to look at and take into consideration. Votes and comments are just one aspect. Another is implementation time vs value returned. We just can't accept every report makes it through, it's just not feasible. That's how we get backed up for 6+ months and then complaints about that delay come in.
I think at this point, even if we add some changes like making it cyclical, we're still going to have a decently long time delay that is going to end up with reports rejected for a variety of reasons. I don't know that it is avoidable, but if you have ideas, I'm all ears.
Edit: I'll take full responsibility for the pattern issue though. It is not something I considered when we first put this in and I continually said that I want you to be willing to report anything. It wasn't until that report and the admin consulted it that we determined that we do not want to set a precedent for that within this system. That's my fault, I'm sorry.
The first time the admin read the report wasn't until it was in the
admin review? I feel like a brief read over during Consideration/Pending to see 'yes,
this is something we would allow via reports' would have been a given. As isn't the case, I feel that needs to be a part if you are not going to allow things - It doesn't need to be a full admin discussion, but a simple 30 seconds ('yes this is something that is code possible', 'this is something we don't want going through the envoy system').
On backups - if you are allowed to say, how much of this is caused by you having to do promos/other projects first? Right now, even despite the backups, it feels like the old system had a quicker turn around with admin input/decisions and kind of things that were accepted/rejected even if it took months for things to be coded.
I've personally been keeping up on all the reports that have been submitted. That said, the entire point of having thresholds to meet is to not require people to look at reports until they get to that point. Additionally, unless you're super familiar with the code, it takes much more than 30s to say if something is 'code-possible.' Besides Ianir, I'm probably the most familiar with the code and there's a lot of stuff I have no idea about. At the end of the day, anything is possible within the code, it's just a matter of how time-intensive it is to make those changes.
I also just pointed out that the old system had 6+ months of backup before decisions were made. Some reports had decisions that were later reversed. The reports from Aug 2017 were not decided on until Jun 2018 and implemented in July 2018, almost a full year later. Yeah, in years past, it may have been faster, but in the last couple years it hasn't been, and that was the second instance of it happening.
What system do you have for pattern submission beyond "Let's ask Estarra"? Is there any oversight beyond Estarra, who is historically against adding things to the game that don't "do anything"?
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
Oh goody, a question for us! We even managed to actually log into the forums for you!
It's both difficult and not difficult, and it depends what we're adding. If we're adding a pattern to an existing ability (e.g. headpieces to accessories), then we can do that ourselves. If the new pattern is a new ability entirely (e.g. musicboxes when they were added many years ago), then it requires coding. Occasionally some other patterns that are not new abilities do too (e.g. adding tessen and nunchaku to scabbards/frogges). We're slowly wading out into the waters of coding, but generally at the moment we'd need help adding that sort of pattern.
New patterns also have to be passed through Estarra like most things we add to the game, so we have to justify the need for it. The 'need' can absolutely be that you all really want something, but it adds another hurdle into the mix. This is why you'll often see new patterns come as bundles when they do get added. We also consider at this point who's had what new patterns in the past years and who needs them more.
The actual adding of the pattern is not hugely difficult, but it does require knowing how to do it and the odd ways in which it can be tricksy and tedious. It also involves coming up with some starter designs for the pattern involved, as we can't just release you a pattern with absolutely no designs - people need those examples.
On top of that, we also then need to consider any new rules that our reviewers or you as trademasters need to be aware of. Quite often, new patterns are covered by existing rules for that skill. Sometimes however they come with their own considerations. Tattoos is a bit of an extreme example, but it's a good one. We will generally have to update the helpfiles both for trademasters and for the review panel every time we release a new pattern, even if it's only small tweaks.
In short, it's more work than you'd think, but not impossibly so. We're always talking amongst ourselves about new patterns we could add, and are trying to find ways that we can bring you new ones more regularly. A good way to help us with that is to become a mortal reviewer - the less time we have to spend managing the design queue, the more time we get to spend on other things.
Comments
I'd like to really suggest that if you're going to have things you just don't want to do or reports aren't a way you want to handle things, that you put those reasons out in the open so we don't spend cycles doing what we think are QoL reports. Half of the reason I did what I did was so that there would be some sort of record of my request beyond a message to the Charites. We've asked for these sorts of things (new patterns) in posts on the Trademasters' Messageboard, and they don't tend to get added; in fact, the last thing I remember being added were Fascinators, and those were suggested by the Charites in a poll as opposed to being something a player posted, and it was several IRL years ago.
I guess my point is this: I saw this as a sign that the admin had listened to our complaints about Lusternia in Estarra's "What problems do you have and what can we do to make it better" megathread, but it seems like only combat reports are being taken seriously so far.
I also just pointed out that the old system had 6+ months of backup before decisions were made. Some reports had decisions that were later reversed. The reports from Aug 2017 were not decided on until Jun 2018 and implemented in July 2018, almost a full year later. Yeah, in years past, it may have been faster, but in the last couple years it hasn't been, and that was the second instance of it happening.