This is a guide for all of you who participate in the Players Development Team. If you are one of them, please make sure that you read and understand the following guide. If you are not a member of the team, you are still welcome to read it as it can help your understanding at what these players do.
Description of the Team
You can read how this team started by clicking here.
In a few words, this team is an effort to involve a small number of players to the Design part of the Game Development. The primary objective of this team, is to help transform the ideas that all players have, into features that can be added in the game.
The objective of the Team
This objective, can be translated into the following process:
-Collect Ideas
-Improve them into working features
-Disapprove the ideas, if they cannot reach a working status
-Approve a feature once finalized
-Prioritize it
You can read about this procedure in detail, by clicking click here.
It is important for everyone to know and realize that the above procedure is something to be carried by every player by the moment he wants to be part of it. The difference for the dev team players is that these players are expected to do so. They are responsible in completing the cycle. While all the rest can choose to interfere at any stage, the dev team players are required to involve at every stage of each feature.
The extra powers of the Team members
Currently, the following are possible:
-They can fully moderate the Game Development and Help Forums.
-They can approve or disapprove Suggestions found in Suggestions thread based on 4-1 votes.
-They can decide an in-game achievement for players that deserve (and do not already have this) with 5-0 votes. Once decided, the Players Dev Team Coordinator will inform administration in order for the achievement to be given.
Typical Responsibilities
- Make sure you have an account at our Community chat and you are at channel #dev
- Subscribe to Development forums Development forums do not generate topics at the Tavern so in order to follow new topics here you need to subscribe.
- Regularly read topics at Game Discussion forums The more dev team players do this, the better for all. You should track topics where no dev team player has posted and post there. We should have at least 1 post of a dev team player to every topic in General Discussion.
- Read topics in suggestions
- Finalize Approved Suggestions
- Prioritize Finalized Approved Suggestions
To subscribe, click at Development at the top, then at the page which will open, scroll to the bottom and click on Subscribe.
Your input there should be mostly to help the author with his idea. Your role is not to disapprove anything there but help them nurture their idea in a way that can be added in the game. Even if their idea is against your taste this should not hinder your ability to instruct them properly.
Remember that other players do not know of the procedure of adding anything to the game and they need such help. They also may not understand the limits (ie, asking 3d action shooting). Or they may propose something that already exists, either closely in the game or as an idea.
You can also merge topics or move them to the archives if they are of no further importance. This happens when a discussion topic either transforms to a suggestion or when its content is no longer relevant.
Finally, you should always motivate players to post their ideas at General Discussion. Either in other forum threads or in-game or in various chats.
This is one of your most important responsibilities. You must participate to as many suggestion topics as possible. Your vote is needed.
However, do not be fast to vote. Many times feedback may be needed even to a Suggestion topic. Ideally, we want all the base functionality to be over during the idea discussion, at Game Discussion thread. Then, ideally, the suggestion should only contain various configuration details. However, in practice this will happen only rarely. So you must retain your patience and help the suggestion flourish to a final produce.
Most of the currently approved suggestions are incomplete so this is currently very important. Hopefully in the future, we will only approved finalized suggestions and this step will no longer be needed. As a finalized suggestion, we describe a suggestion that is ready to implemented. Such a suggestion should have all questions answered. It should include:
-Functionality
-All configuration details and all variables
-In case of PvE feature, some variables can be left for the coding part of the suggestion.
-It should even include menu positions.
The Development Administrator will decide the priority of each feature. This position will be given to a player in the future. Currently, it is held by myself.
However, both now and in the future, the players of the dev team are expected to provide their preference (preferably with reasoning) in which features should be prioritized. For now, do so by reporting to the Players Dev Team Coordinator.
For an up-to-date list of Roles, always check this list: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4883
You will also find the details of every role there.
*** Work in Progress | This page is not finalized | More guides/rules will be added here in the future. | Report to Players Dev Team Coordinator your feedback for your role and we will consider it ***
