Voodoo Team Project

[Shadowood]

Post in here for easy communication going forward. But still check the Google Doc for any missed messaged.

[Shadowood]

I received a reply from CJ that if we believe that "Killing Crew" should be possible in the game then he will create mass controls for it. We just need to help decide this question.

I personally feel strongly about being able to do this. I think it opens the doors to future features that we have only just started to discuss. I do feel there should be restrictions, of which not being able to kill 100% of the crew. But leaving enough crew on board to make the ship still sail. (15 crew)

I would love the teams feedback on this as this will directly effect some purposed voodoo suggestions.

[Captain dungeness]

Hello Teammates!
We have made progress using the google doc and now it's time to move the discussion to the public forum on the suggestions that have potential.

Captain Jack has encouraged me to involve the forum community so the suggestions listed on the "rejected" google docs tab will be moved in the forums to the "Disapproved" area. Also this weekend I will bump the suggestions that need more discussion and add some older voodoo suggestions to the google doc.

We need someone to merge the similar suggestions into 1 topic (eg. Banana Party/Riot and Plague Doctor/Plague Doctor).
Who is willing to do the merging?

Starting this weekend we will need all of us to post on the potential voodoo suggestions and work out the costs/concerns/questions of each suggestion.

Please let me know if I can do better with how this Project is being organized.
Thanks,
Captain D

[Shadowood]

Thanks CD. You are doing a great job so far.

I am not quite sure how to merge to posts, but I will dig around and see what I can do to help with that.

[Captain dungeness]

Go to the post that needs merging. Look at the bottom right: there is a menu box which you can choose "merge topic" and choose which topic to merge.

[Captain dungeness]

Hello Team,
I have added 17 more card suggestions to the google doc. Please review them in the next 3 days.

We need to weed out the "reject" suggestions and encourage public discussion on the suggestions that have potential. Please write your comments and suggest a verdict for each suggestion in the google doc.

-Captain D

[Captain dungeness]

Team,
I have marked a bunch more for "Rejection" based on having at least 3 reject votes by mods.

Please check the suggestions I marked "REJECT" and tell me if you don't want them moved to disapproved or forever hold your peace.

I'll move them to disapproved in a day or two. The next step is encouraging public discussion on the suggestions which we have split opinions.

Thanks,
Captain D

[Captain dungeness]

Captain Jack,
Soon I'm going to start posting requests for feedback on the public forums for suggestions which the team has split opinions. 30+ suggestions disgussed over about 2 weeks. We've only been getting about 80 to 100 views and ~5-10 replies on each topic... Can we offer any compensation for well-formulated feedback? Can we offer 3 or 5 credits to players who post constructive feedback? (Limit 10 credits per player per suggestion topic)? Compensation would be awarded only based on moderators judging feedback as worthy.

Also I will be messaging every guild leader in-game to ask them to post forum links each day to the suggestions currently being disgussed.

-Captain D

[Captain Jack]

Do not expect more - the volume is already very high to get more feedback. The larger the volume, the less the feedback you get on each topic. This is why we wanted a team dedicated to this purpose instead of the classic way of doing it.
As one or you already said but I am sure all have realized, the more suggestions we implement, the higher the suggestion flow gets.

This is a good thing, not a bad thing. Even suggestions, are part of the community here and putting rewards for participation in the community is not our model. Other games might do it, but these other games have different financial ways. We can't do it.

The way I see it, once you are done with the cards and according to results we can proceed to the next step which is disapproval of suggestions of any kind - as long as the suggestion is not fitting.

Still, there are some things that work different than expected. I communicated this through PMs and I will communicate once more.

The procedure, even the one of the voting, must be done in the forum topic. Especially for approved topics. Not only vote but arguments as well. For example, you approved this card:

viewtopic.php?f=42&t=3002

with the following message:

This suggestion has been approved by the Voodoo Suggestion Team.

Please post your suggestions on this idea if you have anything to share.

-Captain D

Right. This is not helpful for anyone, especially dev team.

Dev team will open this topic and see it is approved. Why is this approved though? No clue. I am also curious who voted what? What arguments each had. I am also wondering how you decided this? Was this through PMs? Through the excel? How?

It's not only us though, it's also the rest of the players who will feel this and this is not good.

You can't decide in the background. Decisions and everything must all be in the foreground. I am putting a large percentage of what we need to decide in the forums and receive feedback. Why not you? Don't you need the rest of the player's feedback to help you decide?

This excel plan should only exist for reference. Not use it for decision making. Decision making should be in public. It is wrong in many ways to rely on it for development. Among many other things, it gets old very fast. Plus, most importantly, as the volume increases, it is more tedious to maintain it. More time consuming too, especially in comparison to the model we suggest (everything on the forums, every idea, every thought, every decision).

PMs can be useful but they must not replace public discussion. Use them only scarcely, for best results. We do not seek compromising based on influence of each one of your or your social skills. Everything must be done based on arguments. When you decide over PMs, emotions might complicate things.

I feel like I have written about it a dozen of times already. I am still not sure if you realize what exactly we want from you.

[Captain dungeness]

Thank you for your direction Captain Jack. I understand what you're saying about the google doc and public discussions. I will change how we are using the document: we still need it for mod voting because there's no good way in the forums to concisely record our votes but I will summarize our documented discussions and post them in the public forums for all to read and comment.

I am still aiming to have a list of at least 20 legendary voodoo cards fully discussed/approved (publicly) by the end of the month. I also have some ideas for in-game advertising of our call to comment. I will ask guild leaders to post in their announcements and chatbox something like "Please take a moment to comment on the new card suggestions being discussed in the forums: [link]".

I'll make sure the discussions are all public. So far as a team we have made a lot of preliminary progress by reading through 200 voodoo suggestions and understanding which ones need to be merged and which need lots more discussion. We have written out our preliminary comments and as far as I know everyone has done a great job of keeping emotions from effecting the conversation. I'll make sure we transfer our concise feedback to the forums so people can help us clarify/develop/approve/reject suggestions. I hope that we can match and exceed your expectations with this project. The groundwork for good public discussions has been laid by our conversations in the google doc. You will see my posts in the public forums soon.

-Captain D