Developer Question Corner

[HatsuharuZ]

Have you ever read the Eberron Chronicle? It would be interesting to see developers or QA staff answer game-related questions in those.

Each month, let there be a forum thread in which each person can ask a question to be answered by a dev. One post per forumite, by the way. It would get crowded, otherwise. Then, the devs each pick a question and write an answer to be put in the Chronicle.

[Khatzhas]

I'm not sure that this is a good idea.
You just know that there will be hundreds of questions asked each time, and whatever question is actually answered, you will get people complaining:
"Why didn't you answer the question about X? This just shows that the devs don't care about X/hate X/don't understand about their own game!"

Coming from Warcraft, I'm used to a lot more transparency from the developers, but their forums that I posted in were generally better behaved compared to the DDO forums. I'd like more interaction with or information from the developers, but I'm not sure the forums as they stand now could handle it:
There are plenty of hate posts already here, and while any information would be well-recieved by many, it could serve as an excuse by some for even more attacks.

[Silverwren]

I'm not sure that this is a good idea.
You just know that there will be hundreds of questions asked each time, and whatever question is actually answered, you will get people complaining:
"Why didn't you answer the question about X? This just shows that the devs don't care about X/hate X/don't understand about their own game!"

Coming from Warcraft, I'm used to a lot more transparency from the developers, but their forums that I posted in were generally better behaved compared to the DDO forums. I'd like more interaction with or information from the developers, but I'm not sure the forums as they stand now could handle it:
There are plenty of hate posts already here, and while any information would be well-recieved by many, it could serve as an excuse by some for even more attacks.

I'm inclined to agree.

Some posters in these forums get really annoyed when they mistakenly deduce that a question meant for the general public was directed at the devs. You're suggesting that we do it on purpose? Not a good idea at all. It will only incite flaming attacks by those very same annoyed posters.

[Tolero]

We were thinking of adding something like this to the new video updates if people are interested

[dterror]

There are ways to set up a forum that people can post in, but cannot read posts other people make. If the devs were to do this, it would allow them to pick the questions to answer as you suggested, without providing everyone else a way to spam that ?'s thread with negativity.

*added with edit
Tolero, I read the forums from work and rarely visit them when at home...I'm too busy doing whatever in game to bother with the forums or anything else out of game. Certain parts of the DDO site network is blocked to me at work, such as everything in the compendium, meaning that I already have no access to things like update notes unless someone copy/pastes them to the forums. If you do set up the video updates to be question / answer sessions, then PLEASE also transcribe the ?'s and answers to the forums.

[HatsuharuZ]

We were thinking of adding something like this to the new video updates if people are interested

I would love this.

@dterror: Good idea!

[Soulstabber]

We were thinking of adding something like this to the new video updates if people are interested

That's quite interesting, i personally think bug report is useless, since we don't get feedback if the problem is getting seen by devs, maybe that could work as a feedback tool to the users.
For instance, i bug reported in lamannia and live about frenzy and death frenzy draining hp when using bows (but not adding any vicious dmg to the enemy), and to be honest I don't even know if the devs even know about this issue since its so specific and we get no feedback from bug reports to know if this issue has been addressed, this could fix it =)

[VonBek]

We were thinking of adding something like this to the new video updates if people are interested

I play to explore and have fun. hearing from the peeps that build the game would be cool, especially if its done in an entertaining manner. Rather than number crunching and programming, I'd like to hear how devs like to play, fun stuff observed while running quests outside of work purposes. I suppose I'd like to hear some about the "art of design" and how to craft a quest would be cool. Something friendly, and relaxed.

[Captain_Wizbang]

I think it would be a good if bugs, exploits, rants & raves were left out of it.

The ideal setting are the writers AND the devs telling us about lore, story line & content development meetings.

I for one would love to hear about HOW the game develops, and not about answering the average threads here on the boards.

[dunklezhan]

A webform where you could post one 256 character question over the course of a week, and that day's MyDDO lottery winner got sent the (vetted for profanity and questions that aren't really questions like "why is UR game so lame") list and then got to pick one question, which then was answered by a dev? I could totally go for that.

What I'm getting at is as long as there's a way for the community to freely choose the question, I'm totally up for what Tolero suggested. I don't want to end up with a list of like three marketing-vetted questions to choose from like:

• Turbine why are you so awesome?
• Turbine how are you going to be more awesome this coming year?
• Turbine how can I reward your awesomeness with cash?
• Is it ok if I give you more than that, just because, and if so how, tell me quickly!

Y'know?

The above sarcasm is not because I think the devs or mods would put a list like that together. I just worry about the marketing dept since WB took over...

[dunklezhan]

The ideal setting are the writers AND the devs telling us about lore, story line & content development meetings.

^^This^^

I think that would do more to build empathy and appreciation than just about anything else short of fixing all the bugs all at once in a single update.

[Syllph]

We were thinking of adding something like this to the new video updates if people are interested

Yup. Interested.

[HatsuharuZ]

If Turbine does do something like a "Developer Question Corner", it would be nice if it gave some insight into their priorities, or if they could reassure players that they aren't doing the things that some players accuse them of, such as ignoring certain classes/races of the game and not updating them to be competitive with other classes/races. My own concerns involve the enhancements and spell lists of Clerics/FvS, Rangers and Paladins, amongst other things.

[fco-karatekid]

There are ways to set up a forum that people can post in, but cannot read posts other people make. If the devs were to do this, it would allow them to pick the questions to answer as you suggested, without providing everyone else a way to spam that ?'s thread with negativity.

*added with edit
Tolero, I read the forums from work and rarely visit them when at home...I'm too busy doing whatever in game to bother with the forums or anything else out of game. Certain parts of the DDO site network is blocked to me at work, such as everything in the compendium, meaning that I already have no access to things like update notes unless someone copy/pastes them to the forums. If you do set up the video updates to be question / answer sessions, then PLEASE also transcribe the ?'s and answers to the forums.

On the surface, I'd normally agree; but really, there could simply be a rule: keep it to a question, NO ranting - else the editors/community team will NOT even consider answering it. Furthermore, anything not meeting that criteria can be cube fodder to keep it neater. If a specific forum or a focused topic, it's fair to have stricter rules on structure.

Hell, nex kept signal to noise at a minimum with a simple sentence in his threads. If it's as valuable as I think it would be to most of us, we'll self-police. Can always spin our rants off on general... we do that anyway

Edit: I don't like NOT seeing others' posts that would fit structure criteria, because we have no way of knowing what was already asked.

[Ertay]

They did something like that each week on the swtor forums a while ago. It was nice in theory, but the devs in question there always hand-picked questions they found to be more... "promotionally effective" when answered, instead of the ones that were the most pressing.

With the amount of bugs we still have in this game, I could very much see this going the same way: 99% of the players asking "why does x not work? when will y get fixed? z was promised months ago, why is it still not in?" and they would instead answer something like: "why we like kobolds so much? oh well, good you're asking, you see, we and kobolds have a very special history that goes years back when we..."

[Memnir]

We were thinking of adding something like this to the new video updates if people are interested

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[Brattyone]

We were thinking of adding something like this to the new video updates if people are interested

Yeah, I'd be interested, but like another poster, I'd really want it from the devs viewpoint and nothing to do with the marketing side of things.