Democracy now! Set up balance and equipment committee by players, for players.

[Thomek]

So here's a crazy idea

Since I believe that shaking up cRPG now and then is a good thing, not a bad thing, keeping the mod and community alive, here is my idea:  (And it would take away workload from the devs after a small initial period of teaching and adjusting!)

* To create a group of 3 players on Election that are responsible for balance changes and introducing new equipment to cRPG.

* Devs would teach 2 capable, stable and trustable membesr of the community HOW to implement these changes. These persons cannot be in the committee, as they are simply doing as the comittee decides. These people must be technically savvy and have the power to reject item additions based on technical and aesthetical grounds. These 2 people are simply the doers, without any balance power. Whenever 1 becomes inactive, the remaining one can teach a new one.

I suggest a self governing comitee of 3 standing players and 3 backups.

It would work like this:

(Suggestion for a charter)

1. All members are on Election every 6 months.  (to keep people motivated enough, but still stable and long enough to get things done)
2. Any member can Veto a balance or equipment change. (To make sure the changes are small and conservative)
3. If anyone becomes inactive, the backup will take his/hers place, or if backup is unavailable, there will be a new election.
4. Any changes are publicized every 1st of each month, and implemented 1 month later. (Months warning before any change)
5. At all time, at least 1 member should belong to NA and 1 member to EU. (Different metagame) There cannot be more than 1 member from a single clan.
6. The committee should strive to have good communications with the players. (Perhaps have a sub forum)
7. The goal of the committee is to make cRPG more fair, better, more alive, and to relieve devs of workload.

Asking devs as much as players here, what do you think? Bring in your ideas and additions. Anyone schooled in making charters here?

[Paul]

That's already how it works. Items and stat changes have been in the pipe for a long time. The simple bottleneck is waiting for patch.

[Matey]

just put Saul in charge of item balance, problem solved.

[Tydeus]

1, 3 and 4 appear to be the only ones that aren't currently being done, and I'm not really sure that #3 would even speed the current process up at all. That's not to say of course, that I don't like the idea, it's just that I don't really see where item balance falls into this other than "no patch".

just put Saul in charge of item balance, problem solved.

Admittedly, as much as I like saul's ideas, they're certainly a bit extreme. Also, what Urist said. From my understanding, having a planned patch date would itself provide more motivation for devs. The issue, is that none of us really understand just how time consuming full item patches are. Judging from past experiences, it would seem like it's a day long event for chadz, if not longer depending on any problems that arise.

[Son Of Odin]

Sounds a little... complicated...

(click to show/hide)

Don't mind me, carry on.

[Grumbs]

Veto for any member seems a bit ott.

The more time the devs spend on cRPG though the less likely it will be that we ever see anything playable from their next project. So openning the development up to different guys who aren't involved in MBG could be a good idea.

[Thomek]

Well the reason to make it self-governing is for stability. One or two people may become inactive or just plain stale, and this is often the reason for clans dying. I don't see why it's really different in this case.

Members may come and go, but the organization keeps working.

Also I think this would involve the whole community in a different way than today.

[Riddaren]

It is a fact that the majority of the community embraces melee players fighting on foot.
Ranged and mounted players, even the very best, are not given as much respect. Even if they are nice persons.

I don't see how a commitee made up of melee players fighting on foot would help the balancing of the game.
There needs to be class limitations. We need players from all classes.

A good class mixture would be something like this:
(With players of different subclasses within each class)

Melee

Melee infantry
4 Polearm infantry
4 One handed infantry
4 Two handed infantry

Melee cavalry
4 1H cavalry
4 Lancers
1 2H cav


Ranged

Ranged footmen
3 Archers
3 Crossbowmen
3 Throwers

Ranged cavalry
2 Horse archers
2 Horse crossbowmen
1 Thrower cav


To candidate you should be:
- respectful towards other classes and polite in general
- good with several classes and not just one

[Zlisch_The_Butcher]

Democracy isn't suited for this community, I mean let's be real, this isn't a real community, the people who want balance and fairness here are seriously in the minority.

This is how a democracy could turn out:

The biggest clans pick their candidates, have all their members vote for them, have other clans vote for them in exchange for promising to buff what they mainly play, all sorts of deals are made in order to gain power and not in order to balance.

Candidates are in general picked class wise, let's say there are maybe a candidate from each class who got the vast majority of his classes support, then those candidates join together, agree to work as one and buff everyone who votes for them, so if for example cav and 2h join together then everyone else would glance, and if everyone joined against 2h (everyone else hates them) then 2h would probably get nerfed slightly more than they need to be.


And Riddaren your suggestion got major flaws as well.

[Tydeus]

Democracy isn't suited for this community

To be honest, democracy isn't really suited for any video game. They're elitist by nature, though that's not to say it has to cater to a specific group, even they do generally cater to either casual or "hardcore"(I really hate this word) audiences.

[Tears of Destiny]

(click to show/hide)

Hell no, people are stupid and often go by "what would be cool" instead of "what would be balanced."


Democracy does not work for specific roles, otherwise we would be having laymen people voting on how to build bridges instead of the architects and engineers. Same thing here, the average person has no business balancing a game especially given how utterly retarded and biased most of you are with a particular fetish for X class.


There is democracy, and then there is mob rule, and given that we would not have proper "checks and balances" I see this turning into "mob rule" and ruining a perfectly good game.


The average elected person would not represent "the people" and instead just represent themselves due to being elected purely on "popularity."

The "teaching" thing mentioned sound rather interesting, and I think this could be a nice idea, just unfeasible given our limited community.

[rufio]

this stuff could work if you were able to find the right people, wich i doubt 

[Ronin]

this stuff could work if you were able to find the right people, wich i doubt 

+1

The suggestion is good. Just don't put any 2handed heroes in charge.

[Molly]

Overall a rather bad idea - will never evaaah work.

[Joker86]

Although it's against the spirit of the time here in the west, I think democracy itself doesn't work as good as in theory, in any case.

For having democracy actually work you need to have the "demos" be educated, resonable and unbiased. Just enter a quarter of your city where the appartments are... not so expensive... and take a look around. Most of them above the age of 18 are allowed to vote. Do you think they will do this with the ideas of democracy, social equality of whatever in mind? Or won't they just vote for that one who is most charismatic or makes the promises which suit them best?

In the cRPG community you have a similar problem. Most players don't even get how balance works ("don't make all classes balanced, they need different stregthes and weaknesses", wtf?), and the name "player" automatically indicates that they are in the danger of being biased. Next to this we have a lot of clans which means we have different groups of interest within the community. I think it will be really difficult to establish a system which takes care of all those issues.

I prefer having an item team which has as much distance to the game as possible, with a certain plan in mind, and if they need to get some info regarding questions in the area of the skill ceiling, then they should ask the corresponding top players for that information and balance accordingly.