Conquer Club

There has been discussion for a little while (notably here and here) about the "slowdown" of commentary in map threads.

We have all been through periods of mapmaking where feedback has been hard to come-by. There has been mention of committees, increasing staffing levels, etc - although I'm sceptical about the longevity of these schemes, as they're dependant on giving responsibility for commentary to too few people.

In the past, when I have been desperate for feedback, I have sent a PM to people who have expressed an interest in the development of my map and other foundry friends/peers asking for their feedback. What other methods of attracting useful feedback have people successfully employed? Would any of these work as alternative to increasing the burden on a mere handful of people?

There have been several mapmakers that have PM'd me. It's generally pretty effective, because a lot of times I simply forget! It's nice to feel wanted, too

-Sully

MrBenn, desperate to see what you think of my map. Get in there and leave lots and lots of feedback. Please. Same goes for you Victor and anyone who wants to.

PM players and other foundry guys works for a limited time but if we all PM someone at the same time they might get a bit pissed. Main foundry has 20 maps, imagine DiM's or natty's response if we all PM them together. Is it OK though to PM a foundry mod if you need them to look at a certain aspect though?

Sniper08 has come into my map as a regular, he found it through my sig. The only other way I can think of is to make the foundry a lot easier to find and understand.

We should start spamming all the other forums so that people will know the foundry needs more people...

How will people know that we need more commenters if the only place where these issues are ever talked about in is the foundry, and thus only those who already visit the foundry read about them?

i too have received pms from many mapmakers asking for feedback and i've always given it.
as long as the map maker asks politely and doesn't spam you everyday asking for more i think it is a very normal way of getting feedback.

I considered running some kind of 'contributor of the month' or 'post of the month' scheme when I was foreman - but I was never fully convinced about the merits thereof...

koontz1973 wrote:MrBenn, desperate to see what you think of my map. Get in there and leave lots and lots of feedback. Please. Same goes for you Victor and anyone who wants to.

PM players and other foundry guys works for a limited time but if we all PM someone at the same time they might get a bit pissed. Main foundry has 20 maps, imagine DiM's or natty's response if we all PM them together. Is it OK though to PM a foundry mod if you need them to look at a certain aspect though?

Sniper08 has come into my map as a regular, he found it through my sig. The only other way I can think of is to make the foundry a lot easier to find and understand.

Since you addressed this to me, I'll take the liberty of saying that it's fine to PM the relevant ca for specific feedback/queries. How would you purpose making the foundry easier to find?

MrBenn wrote:Since you addressed this to me, I'll take the liberty of saying that it's fine to PM the relevant ca for specific feedback/queries. How would you purpose making the foundry easier to find?

Here are 6 ideas.

Right now we have a button for tournaments, at the top of every page. Putting a foundry one next to it would help.

At the top of the page, we have been getting clickable banners for holidays, how about one for the foundry to go between holidays. Run that for a month to see the response.

In the main board index, General info should be at the top so everyone who goes there can see it without scrolling down past Information.

Run similar competitions as the one you suggested but to make sure the feedback is good, allow the map makers to put forward the winners. Give a GA medal to both map maker and commentator. In other words "This guy really helped me so he should get the GA"

Run other competitions, it was the city one that got me here.

Added a suggestion in the suggestions forum about placing all recent posts from all forums in the home page. This way everyone who comes into the site can see the list and either play there games or join the community. This would also benifit the foundry.
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=149927http://www.conquerclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=149927

One of the major drawbacks of our attempts to Reach Out is that people in General Discussion (the easiest way to reach out) are extremely hostile of us trying to move out of our "spot." We've tried various means over the past 3 years to get more people involved, but each effort was a temporary spike of 10-20, which petered down to 1-2 actual new people. I don't know if the hostility part has changed, as it's been a while since we last tried.

Well In some ways I think it's just the nature of the Biz. Most people aren't used to being a part of any sort of creative process. People who watch TV don't think about monitoring their favorite shows while they're in production and giving feedback to the creators. Honestly I don't think most people care about how it happens as long as it happens. They expect us to work behind the scenes and just get it done.

In some ways I don't think that's terrible. If everyone commented in the foundry 80-90% of the people wouldn't know anything about what they were talking about and would dish out scores of bad advice. I'd rather have a few people who know what they're talking about any day. To the other 90% they just know that something goes on behind the curtain and every so often a new map is released from Beta.

I'm not saying that the foundry should be a private club, I just think that the people who have something worth while to contribute will naturally gravitate to the foundry, and that we shouldn't invite every Tom, Dick, and Harry to comment on how he "doesn't like the color yellow and that everywhere he see's yellow you should make it green" Or something equally silly.

I agree with Bison that not everyone has the ability to comment, but that should not stop them from saying what the think. Map makers can always ignore the advice and I am sure the mods can spot bad ignored advice over the good.

Being fairly new to the site I have looked into the foundry merely out of curiosity at first. I saw a couple of maps I thought I might like to play, primarily the Austro-Hungarian map. So I followed their development. There are now a couple of other maps under development that I have commented on, because they interest me as well. The biggest issue for me is that I really am unable to make any kind useful input as other then esthetic. Gameplay can't be commented on until the map is playable, other than something that might be spoted in setup. It is probably this limited amount of input that is possible that keeps people from visiting the foundry more often.

The Bison King wrote:we shouldn't invite every Tom, Dick, and Harry to comment on how he "doesn't like the color yellow and that everywhere he see's yellow you should make it green" Or something equally silly.

And people wonder why the foundry has a reputation of elitism...

The Bison King wrote: I just think that the people who have something worth while to contribute will naturally gravitate to the foundry

Sadly this is not so. If it was, we wouldn't have the problem in the first place. When I started mapmaking, there was still plenty of feedback offered to all maps, and lots of people visited the foundry... now, it's the same faces all around, some new ones, mostly old ones. You can see the difference when maps go to beta... there are lots of people with extensive knowledge of the inner workings of the game, of strategies, what works about the gameplay, and what doesn't... and yet, those people don't comment on the maps until they are in beta and there's something wrong about them - that's what should change, we should get those people here commenting during the process, not just after the map is already released...

And it is not said that the foundry people can't have uninformed opinions too. Even the people in the foundry have various levels of understanding/knowledge of graphical and gameplay design, yet we welcome everyone's feedback, because it provides us with perspective and differing viewpoints.

Even if 90% of the feedback we'd get was "this is great" or "this sucks", it would still be better than now, since we'd get some indication of what kind of maps people want to see and play, instead of basically going with guesswork like it is now.

I'm shocked nobody has said this yet.

Do we all realize it is the middle of Summer? Comments in Summer ALWAYS suck. Look back through history. If we don't see an upturn in comments in September that is when I would start to panic.

The Bison King wrote:we shouldn't invite every Tom, Dick, and Harry to comment on how he "doesn't like the color yellow and that everywhere he see's yellow you should make it green" Or something equally silly.

I think the green lantern has been commenting on your maps.

natty_dread wrote:

The Bison King wrote:we shouldn't invite every Tom, Dick, and Harry to comment on how he "doesn't like the color yellow and that everywhere he see's yellow you should make it green" Or something equally silly.

And people wonder why the foundry has a reputation of elitism...

The Bison King wrote: I just think that the people who have something worth while to contribute will naturally gravitate to the foundry

Sadly this is not so. If it was, we wouldn't have the problem in the first place. When I started mapmaking, there was still plenty of feedback offered to all maps, and lots of people visited the foundry... now, it's the same faces all around, some new ones, mostly old ones. You can see the difference when maps go to beta... there are lots of people with extensive knowledge of the inner workings of the game, of strategies, what works about the gameplay, and what doesn't... and yet, those people don't comment on the maps until they are in beta and there's something wrong about them - that's what should change, we should get those people here commenting during the process, not just after the map is already released...

And it is not said that the foundry people can't have uninformed opinions too. Even the people in the foundry have various levels of understanding/knowledge of graphical and gameplay design, yet we welcome everyone's feedback, because it provides us with perspective and differing viewpoints.

Even if 90% of the feedback we'd get was "this is great" or "this sucks", it would still be better than now, since we'd get some indication of what kind of maps people want to see and play, instead of basically going with guesswork like it is now.

Who are these people? I don't see why the mod's can't have a list of people that they can pm and say "hey, the comments here are needed. Please take some time to look at these map. Thank you" Also, I feel like the length of time it takes to get maps through the foundry has disinterested people. Also, if so many people comment when the maps go beta why not have Drafts to Gameplay/Design(more on the gamplay) - XML/Beta testing (so that game play can be tested before graphics go up and encourage more to comment on the map) and then the nitty gritty Graphics.

Nola_Lifer wrote:I don't see why the mod's can't have a list of people that they can pm and say "hey, the comments here are needed. Please take some time to look at these map. Thank you"

We have it --> memberlist.php?mode=group&g=193085

thenobodies80 wrote:

Nola_Lifer wrote:I don't see why the mod's can't have a list of people that they can pm and say "hey, the comments here are needed. Please take some time to look at these map. Thank you"

We have it --> memberlist.php?mode=group&g=193085

a proper list with people that actually respond and come post when they're being asked.
many people on that list are inactive and a vast majority of those that are active don't bother to come in the foundry and post.
i think what Nola_Lifer is really asking for is a "Feedback Committee" or something.

You could start a new Feedback Committee, but I am quite sure it would fill up with people who would claim to be interested and then would lose interest, just as the Map Surveyors did. Perhaps inactive members of the Map Surveyors group should be sent a message, gently reminding them of their voluntary duties, and those who do not get off the stick should be culled. Then, a call for new members of the group might draw in fresh eyes and young blood (sorry if the metaphor is a bit gory).

I feel like a lot of Map Surveyors signed on for the updates/information, and don't view it so much as a call to comment.

-Sully

Well, as near as I remember, every PM I received through the Map Surveyors mailing list asked me to come and comment.

ender516 wrote:Well, as near as I remember, every PM I received through the Map Surveyors mailing list asked me to come and comment.

Right. I still think most signed up just for the info, or for kicks and giggles, even. I don't think many see Map Surveyors as a commitment.

-Sully

I think I was only sent one pm. Not sure how long I've been a member of the group but I don't receive much info.

You're right, we didn't use that "option" for a while. I don't know exactly why....

And Map surveyors is a free option, I can't force people to go here and comment on a map. If they want, they can do it, if not I won't blame them for that.