Discussion

[goldcrud]

Originally Posted by akow

Are you joking or what? i come here and read whats going on,because i know if ask something not only with other people flame me,but the devs will too..bash the hell out of you more than and reg. poster here will..GEESH you have some balls saying that about us..most are in fear of saying anything cause your dam mods will ban the hell out of them for dumb things...
and yes i know i stand a good chance at getting banned,because i'm bashing a dev of sorts...

but i'm sick and tired of all the b.s from yall..
when yall want to grow up some, I might be back..but then again...**** this..all i see is problems left and right.. devs getting pushed out ,devs ripping off money that was gving to them to help with this project.. I see nothing ever coming out of this..CAUSE OF PISS POOR LEADERSHIP OF IT,and the blaming of everyone else but yall for problems with it...GROW UP PEOPLE!remeber no one ask anyone to do this,this is something people got to gether to do for the love of the game..i guess you forgot about that,and the devs are on a god trip...

nOW go ahead and flame me Mr.nubs ROFL

Well I'm gonna have to say the Devs are a lot better than they use to be. I haven't seen them ban anyone in a long time myself and I try to visit the forums a couple times a week. Umm Ramsey isn't really a Dev of Sorts he is a Dev here at SWGEMU if it wasn't for him we would be a lot further behind. Also if I were the devs here I would ban everyone who talks crap about me its their forums why shouldn't they be able to do what they want. But really I'd have to say they are really restraining themselfs it'd be nice if people could restrain themselfs too.

[Merx]

I am a Pre CU Player, and have tried to get into the IRC but am at a complete loss at how to use it. I would love nothing more than to be able to play Pre-CU but last time I tried the EMU there was no combat, no skills, no nothing, just chatting.
If there is more that I can do to maybe play, and help please let me know but last I knew we needed special permissions to access the EMU test center, and I don't have that.

[Amoco]

Suggestion 1: More suggestion specific forums. Having 1 suggestion forum for EVERYTHING is absurd at this point. Everyone has suggestions,ideas, hopes etc. but it just falls into the swamp with so many other posts/flames.
Until release, have a Combat Suggestions forum. A Crafting Suggestions forum. Stress Test suggestion forum. A Jedi Suggestion forum. Of course, I've heard it mentioned the reason why this isn't so is because of moderation, which brings me to my second suggestion

Suggestion 2: Stop the moderation and have a more pronounced "Report Post" button for threads so that one moderator could go through and bam bam lock/delete/ban if they need to. Trust me, the community is going to grow so large you guys won't be able to moderate it anyhow, so you had better lay the foundation for a self-policed and organized community now.

Suggestion 3: Sticky and gather the constructive posts. You can't stop flame wars, but you can still gleam the concepts and ideas from them and put them into an orderly list.

Suggestion 4: The reliance on the clunky and ancient IRC for this massive project will soon reach the point of laughable. The only client you should expect this many people to have is a web browser and their swg game discs, beyond that you will end up pulling your hair out (if you haven't already)

[RabidDog]

Ramsey has been very patient, and understanding about the banning frustration. To this point I have been quiet, because of a number of reasons, and some you have named:
1. Getting flamed.
2. I had herd of strict banning.
3. Was not sure if I would be heard.

These are just a few of the issues that have kept me silent, but as I read all 38 pages of post ig ot disgusted. We as a community need to stop with blame, and holding past grudges. It is obvious by Ramseys posts the devs are acknowledging prior mistakes, and now asking for the community to help. There have been some good ideas, and I have a back ground in advertising, but the one most powerful form of advertising has escaped everyones grasp. approx. 70% of products in the current market are originally bought NOT by TV, fliers, radio, or any other costly form of advertising. Most of those products are bought by WORD OF MOUTH, and that is still the most successful.

Now I know all, or at least most of you had friends when you played SWG, and that most of you had guildies, or community friends that you may have gotten email addresses from. Now, if you think about it, if we have 8000 members, and if every member had 5 email addresses to friends that you started to lose touch with. If you take the time of 15 minutes to write and send a nice email, giving information about the SWGEmu, and how it will be bringing back the game the loved. We as a community just made an 40,000 person, direct advertisement. Remember, 90% of all emails that are personalized, by recognizable email addresses, are read as long as they do not have FWD in the front.

This may not be the best way to reach people on a immediate, large scale. However, if we get 50% of those 40,000, and they each send 5 emails, now we have touched 100,000. This can cascade for a long time, and have a snowball effect. This can just kick off an advertising push, to inform people about the SWGEmu.

This community will succeed, or fail with us together, not because of the devs, and the devs wont succeed without our best effort to help.

Thank you
Rabid

I got banned on IRC, because I posted EPIC POST on a Racial Sterotype post.

[blacky]

My personal opinion (well, why i stopped being interested) is when the server went closed. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing wrong with closed source (i think i was "shihan" back on the old forums but i cant remember). I submitted one patch for the previous OSS core. But thats not why i'm no longer an active member.

I still stop by to see how its progressing and for me alot of what im interested in the hackability of the thing which is hard to explain so i'll give an example from when dolserver hit the streets.

When dolserver first came out I was very keen to try it for all the reasons anyone likes using server emu's. But its also something you can be actively involved in (unlike its sister project coad). The first thing I did when the code was good enough to login to was code up a auction merchant in its internal scripting language. That led to other things like the developer adding new hooks in the scripting language and so forth. In short, i was able to participate (as in have an impact on the project) without being an active dev for the project and still actually coding (now and then) for it.

I guess what im saying in is its hard to comment on vapourware (not that this is entirely vapourware, but its something the "users" really cant touch). The question "What do you want to be able to do in the scriptable npc's" is hard to answer because the answer is (in broad terms) obvious and hard to define in finer detail without actually seeing how coding an NPC would be like.

Lets say you coded the scripting engine such that it had 4 hooks:
1) when someone talks to it
2) when someone attacks it
3) when someone comes within a certain range
4) when someone leaves a certain range
Obviously this is very limited, but its a starting point, so users downloaded the source, get it running, code an npc and then find "ahh, we need some state information because this guys giving a multi-part quest".

Again, thats only a small example (of one particular component of swgemu) but it illustrates what im trying to get at and im sure im not the only one who feels that way.

Again, im not saying SWGEMU should be OSS, im just saying its the reason i personally have stopped hanging around (which is probably a good thing anyways )

[darkfury]

yea but i know most of us probably have friends that arent big forum users or people that are just reading the forums and not signing up that are awaiting the game to release so we can all play.

[lei]

It doesnt really look as if you want all of the community to do anything.
Go on IRC you say. All time I went on IRC there has been stupid off-topic joking or other obscure talk. I have no time to hang around 24x7 there to occasionally grab some info for test schedule or anything.

If you really want the community to take part - run a test for a week or two, announce when and how to take part a week before and tell the ppl what you want them to test and where you want the response.

just my 2 cent.

[damostmorbid]

I disagree, people have to speculate on what they want to see now, while they're coding it so they can get ideas on how to code the thing better so anything people want to see in mods etc, wont be impossible later.

[Unsoundhero]

Well ethier way, I think I speak for all of us when all we want is pre-cu back and it doesnt take going into IRC everyday to know that. Also, even when I do go in IRC all I see is people getting banned for various reasons.

[BlazeHoliday]

after reading alot of things over the past few days on this topic, i think we just need to be kept up to date on fixes and breakthroughs... even if they are minor. you guys get a major update every month or longer and we get alot of buzz alot of speculation and alot of hope, then boom. NOTHING. If we are up to date all the time we have more things to look forward to and post about when we log in.

my 2 credits :P

[Nabodia]

I'm kinda late to this topic, thanks to the link from the guys at Sunrunner Vets

Anyway, i'm going to be perfectly honest the average person like me of course really just wants an up and working swgemu. I really don't care whats going on over here until everything is working and thats the sentiment of alot of people I know that are interested in playing.

So it comes down to this you'll have a more active community when you all finally get things up and running.

Good day

[LSky]

Originally Posted by Nabodia

So it comes down to this you'll have a more active community when you all finally get things up and running.

QFE, it has always been this way. Don't expect things to be different here.

[mikalar]

My 2 credits worth:

I've been following the Emu and will continue to do so, so long as I don't get banned. I was very excited in the early days and even contributed (>$100) to the cause only to see the funds walk away.

I've volunteered several times to help in coding projects as I have over 20 years c/C++ experience doing client/server coding and mostly received heckles from shall we say less than a professional crowd.

I can appreciate how much work there is to do and the amount of time its going to take to get there. If it is to be just a PVP version of SWG then its probably pretty close but to add in crafting, entertaining, bazaars, mission terms, creature spawns, creature taming, fishing, etc. so its more palatable to a broader audience, its a long way off.

I just decided that I'm too old for the nonsense from a few who think they have it all (no one in particular in mind).

I don't have the wherewithall to monitor IRC especially from work and when I get home I generally have other things to do.

So I'll watch for awhile and hope for the best

[jonaku]

Here are some thoughts on why your community building efforts are not succeeding to the degree you would like:
-- Your FAQs rudely tell noobs to read FAQs before asking stupid noob questions
-- Your FAQs rudely convey that the forum mods are ban happy and will quickly ban anyone asking a stupid noob question or being subjectively disruptive
-- Noobs are scared of IRC, which is a 1980s technology that no one except Linux freaks use
-- Your admins and mods say antagonistic things to forum participants, it makes this forum look unprofessional, fly-by-night and hostile
-- You don't provide systematic and easy to find info on what SWGemu is and how it's progressing

Some suggestions:
-- Create a "newbie yard" forum (like EQ2)
-- Improve your FAQ materials in tone and substantive quality
-- Provide weekly updates on progress
-- Use a gentler touch as a mod and discourage unprofessional behavior from mods/admins when posting
-- Consider writing an article about yourselves on wiki
-- You should provide links to SWGemu affiliated server sites and get them to link back to you
-- Get rid of IRC or stop relying on it so strongly and shift those IRC efforts back to the forum
-- Make the forum more prominently displayed and advertised on the homepage of swgemu.com
-- Let other community members answer noob questions for you
-- Create more or different forum topics than the ones you currently have
-- Have a lawyer address for you the legality of your work so that people stop questioning it
-- Provide more videos
-- Get those videos onto youtube and googlevideo and let people download high quality videos
-- Have weekly screenshots for a screenshot gallery
-- Have community polls on weekly basis
-- Publish interviews with your devs on your website (who are they? what do they enjoy about swgemu dev work? what are the challenges?)
-- Reach out to the game magazines and game websites and invite them to do articles about you and your work
-- Make easier-to-find and easier-to-understand FAQ materials on how noobs can download, install and use the SWGemu client
-- Maybe a have "noob" section of your website
-- Do some guerilla marketing of SWGemu on other community forums (like Fires of Heaven, EVE, Stratics, MMORPG, silkyvenom etc.)

I love you guys and hope very much that you succeed. I hope you find some of the above suggestions helpful.