An EQ Player's Council that Represents Players

How so?

The current CRC was hand-picked by Darkpaw, not the players.. We don't even know the names of the players on the CRC. We don't know which mechanics, feedback, and suggestions are have been sent to the CRC for analysis. We also do not know what their position on various issues are since the NDA cloaks the entire process in a veil of secrecy.

The devs getting feedback from players that do not necessarily represent the players is problematic from a point of view of accurate representation and authentic inclusion.

A proposed Player Council would be selected from the EQ player based on a one player, one vote system would have obvious legitimacy than the opposite.

There are no rules engraved in stone about this proposal.

Some excellent points here! Thank you.

To address the lack of resources argument that has been brought up. You are right, I'm not sure how much time the devs have to spend on customer feedback and liasoning with a player council.

However, I know that the community manager positions do have budgeted time to liason with the non-forum EQ community.

Here are a few apt bullet point requirements taken directly from the official Community Manger at Darkpaw job description posted a year ago:

https://gamejobs.co/Community-Manager-at-Daybreak-Games-4132

• Gathering information and community feedback for Development and other internal partners, providing professional reports on community trends and sentiment
• Providing players with an authentic, trusted point of contact and authority for their concerns and interests; responding to their questions and providing solutions wherever possible
• Providing relevant and timely input on Community and Development strategies
• Fostering and maintaining positive relationships with community organizations, fan sites and media
• Driving meaningful community engagement on all platforms, internal and external, with emphasis on social media, videos, livestreams, and forums

As everyone can see, the official job description describes a comprehensive series of requirements that expects robust engagement from the community manager with the players. There are many more bullet points which are also very enlightening and interesting.

Given the responses so far, I think the best way to proceed with the idea of a Player Council is to create a third party EQ fansite that is open to the community and then elects its own player represenatives. By doing this, Darkpaw doesn't have to expend one ioto of energy and resources nor can they be accused of favoritism. The onus is then placed on the community manager division of Daybreak to ensure a high level of healthy studio-customer relations. This is vitally important because the devs can focus on what they do best: making Evequest.

The Fires of Heaven forums took a smiliar inititive a few years ago with an AMA (ask me anything) and presented the EQ devs with a great number of good questions. So this kind of approach is not unusual and it has set a precedent. Since we don't have Fan Faires anymore where EQ devs attend question & answer panels, this may be a good way to go.

I believe having a 3rd party EQ fansite where dedicated EQ players chart their own course, elect their own class reps (from EQ live and EQ TLP) and then reach out to Darkpaw with their findings might be the most viable option moving foward.

The point of an NDA is so nobody can leak information about the game that hasn't otherwise been made public. It doesn't require everything about the CRC to be a mystery and I know I at least post all my opinions on here like I always have. And I also still send PMs with my feedback for Wizards and the number of times I get a response is still about 0.01%.

This doesn't mean anything. You are assuming players picked by other players would be superior to those picked by the devs which is not necessarily the case. I would, in fact, argue the exact opposite.

It is left up to individual members whether they want to disclose it or not to prevent potential harassment. That said, most of the members are known if you know where to look.

An NDA is what allows those things to potentially be discussed with the CRC. Game mechanics, new systems, etc. are the intellectual property of Daybreak Games. They won't just share it with everyone.

This doesn't mean anything. Just because someone is picked by other players doesn't mean they necessarily represent me or anyone else. Different players have different ideas about how the game should work, and no single person is going to represent everyone.

That said, the current group of players represents diverse interests in the game, and almost all of them try to represent the general consensus of the game as best they can. We all want EQ to be a successful, fun game. Well, maybe not one or two of them.

That is the worst possible way to select people for this type of program.

This proposal is all about giving a voice to the players and allowing them to pick their own representatives to present them to the devs. This is not about the devs presenting ideas to the players which is the assigned role of the CRC. The devs already have carte blanche to do as they please when creating EQ. That is not in dispute. As is mentioned almost daily on these forums the devs being the ultimate arbiters of what goes into EQ can simply choose to accept or ignore unsolicited player feedback.

The devs have vetted and picked the CRC represenatives.So by design, those members represent themselves. Those CRC members have no mandate from the players. I have no problem with that due to the unique nature of the role of the CRC. However the role of Player Council would be entirely different.

Using the same argument, every Daybreak employee should be icognito and remain nameless to avoid potential harrassment. Thankfully this is not the case as we live in a free society and all of the names of each Darkpaw employee are proudly and appropriately listed the official EverQuest credits for each expansion.

I agree. That's what the CRC is for. The CRC pipeline of infomation is from Darkpaw to the CRC. My proposal is completely different: it's a pipeline of information from the Player's Council to Darkpaw. That does not require any form of NDA protection or secrecy. It would be the exact opposite with full transparency from start to finish.

That's true. This is why a larger sample size of players who vote for Player Council class representatives will have more legitimacy to represent the players then a handful of Darkpaw selected players.A Player Council established based on thousands of votes would have far mor accuracy about the state of an EQ class desirabliity than the current system.

I agree. Most of us do want EQ to be as successul as possible. A large part of being successful is beiong attentive to the wants and needs of your customers who are actually playing your MMO. A independent Player's Council run on a 3rd party website has the potential for the non-forum EQ community develop a player consensus on perennial issues like class balance and then submit it openly and publicly to the Darkpaw developers. This would save them and the community manager(s) a lot of time and cost them nothing.

If a group of Toyota Highlander owner enthusiasts formed a vibrant non-official community around their passion for driving Highlanders and identified the most pressing issues they faced, and them submitted them to them in an organized way, don't you think Toyota would show them some respect and take their concerns seriously?

Since the forums are routinely contentious, have a low signal to noise ratio and dubious track record in having our voices heard, I now believe the best way to organize a voluntary non-official Player Council is on a 3rd party website. Nobody would be forced to join. Tntelligent and passionate EQ players would most likely show up to contribute and vote. There is strength and legitmacy in having numbers. Ask the AARP or any other consumer rights organizations.

No.

You Can't Handle the Truth!

It's not a one-way street. People can and do bring up issues. Whatever goal you think your program will accomplish, the existing one already does. You just don't seem to like the fact you aren't on it/got to choose who is on it, and you don't like that what is said isn't public.

That's not how it works. No one is the arbiter of truth for any subject because no one can be, but the people there try and speak for as many as they can. Again, however you imagine your program would work, it won't.

Don't be stupid.

Again, it's not a one-way street. No program would be worth anything if it worked like that.

What exactly do you think your program would accomplish without an NDA?

"Hey devs, we believe there are issues with X. Will you do something about it?"
"We'll look into it."
"What? How? When?"
"We can't tell you, you don't have an NDA."

I don't think you understand what any of those words mean.

Oh you sweet summer child.

No. Toyota would make a focus group to discuss potential changes and have that focus group give feedback under a highly restrictive NDA. And then give free cars to "influencers" to promote the company.

The strength of the AARP is that old people vote, and have money. EQ design choices are not made by player votes, and the only thing your money buys you is what they decide to make.

If you look at even the most recent posts, you'll see that many of the people on here have differing views about how the game's direction should be taken. Some prefer it to remain as-is, others would like a change.

I'm more than happy to have words on here with people who don't want what I do, and vice-versa.
However, if I knew that those people in my opposing corner were also members of the group who got to dictate to DBG what we, the community, as a whole wants. I'd be less inclined to invest time in such a project.

As it stands now, I've got a fairly limited chance of seeing the changes I'd like in the game ever coming to fruition, but there is a chance. If some of the people on here got their way to influence the devs directly, I'd never see those changes happen.

If that were to take place, where is the incentive for those who don't agree with the rest of the community to continue playing? "This isn't the game for you", "Git Gud", is probably the responses I'd be expecting shortly before I quit the game and looked elsewhere.

All that would be left is the shell of a community who all think alike and spend their days battling with the devs on things that would only make their vision of the game a reality. Very similar to a one-party political debate.

The only way it would work is there was more than one community of differing views that could each put their point forward and see what got decided and then who decides who goes into those communities? A vote system? The most 'popular' posters?

It feels like too much effort to make it work with potentially too little reward.

No one dictates anything to DBG except the people that own the company.

And myself, of course. I secretly run everything.

Exactly what I was meaning when I said it would be too much work for very little reward. The very first sentence of the CRC mission statement says it, 'The Community Resource Council is a program designed to give players and members of the development team a confidential space to discuss upcoming design decisions with the benefit of a non-disclosure agreement'

That suggests DBG will have already made decisions without the players and are really only asking for feedback based on that. It doesn't sound like they're taking suggestions.

I could be wrong, I'm not in it. But I doubt it's a fully two-way conversation with suggestions and decisions being made by both parties. If that is the case, then I don't think the CRC is working to the best of their abilities based on some of the most recent decisions made within the game.

Nothing says they have to actually do anything with CRC feedback or suggestions.

As another poster said, some of us do direct line to the dev's via PM's and sometimes get responses ... sometimes get resolutions as a response. It's all how you view things and your perspective. If you watch when they ask and politely do what they request it's not that hard. So in response to OP, no I do not think another group voted by a popularity contest in the forums is necessary. It's also not the dev's responsibility to answer every post or PM, it's their job to do their job and put content and fixes out that are at the top of the list. Hitting like on the top response moves a bug to the top of the list. Veterans Lounge is a wish list. My guess, they already have a design and outline for next year's xpac drop.

Does it matter? Does the CRC matter? Most of what would make Everquest better is what Everquest has lost over time, and the players that care the most about those losses have left the game.

Who are the CRC? Are they boxers, whales, casuals, or what? I understand non-disclosure for upcoming products, as I have been on support staff for other developers, but secrecy and no community relations with the rest of the community defeats the purpose.

As for the Devs not having the time, that is a complete cop-out. There are many things in the game that take almost as much time to do wrong as it takes to do them right, but from many Dev responses here, I don't see them wanting to change how things are done or see out of the box they have put themselves in. It's almost all lather, rinse, repeat game development now.

We do know the names.

We do have someone who has many pages of feedback that goes to the devs - and I have seen less than 5 in those suggestions that I would be in favor of.

There is no way to be accurate with this suggestion for a player group to submit feedback. Not only do many players not even come to the forums but many others are shot down after one tentative comment when a certain few blast their post to the nether world. So they never post again.And if they did vote it would be out of dislike for the person suggesting the idea, not the idea.

In addition to that you have many players that feel it would be a waste of time, that nothing is ever changed via this method.

They already tried to run polls in game for feedback and that got so little response it was dropped.

So we would only have these forums to base it on.

It would just be a repeat of many of the posts which spiral down into long winded, many pages of posts all arguing their side.

The CRC matters as a "sounding board" for dev ideas whether the feedback changes what the devs end up doing doesn't actually matter, what matters is they got to test those ideas out on a group of dedicated players & see what they think, that will inform their decisions even if it doesn't change them.

Sometimes you simply do not want ideas to get widely disseminated, either to manage expectations, to reduce wild specualtion that may just create unhelpful noise and sometimes just to assist in how to frame concepts & present them in a positive way when there may be downsides to an idea or sacrifices that will be required.

There's nothing to say players cannot become a little more organised in rounding out ideas they have internaly in their group prior to presenting a suggestion in a more well-reasoned or better presented way - many guilds have done this in the past when they wanted to get a point across to the dev team, but it all depends on how well the group works with each other even when they may have differing perspectives or opinions, being able to present both sides of an argument is an important tool in a group's arsenal when they are trying to argue their case.

I can understand the suspicion of CRC and what they do, who they are, how they were picked, and what are they accomplishing.

The new additional CRC members we added in the past year were picked in part to have a greater representation of the EQ community as a whole.

The rough idea was to include players who:

• Unique server coverage, for example:
  • Antonius Bayle, Test, Zek, Agnarr, Firiona Vie, Mischief/Thornblade, Vaniki
• Play full time on TLPs, both late-stage TLPs and those who play on each new TLP every year
• Do not raid
• Primarily enjoy soloing
• Primarily enjoy boxing
• Primarily enjoy grouping
• Consider themselves hardcore raiders
• Raid more casually in a guild who is not cutting-edge
• Are in guilds who are not the top 10
• Are not in a guild at all
• Are heavily invested/interested in tradeskills or player housing
• Develop/support a custom UI
• Are lore experts
• Have not played EQ for 500 years (i.e. new(er) players)
• At least one player for each class at "mastery" level
• Coverage in terms of players who don't have X class as their primary interest (for example, someone who has a lot of experience with a certain class as their alt. They are often more willing to inform the development team if something is broken or OP, or to suggest positive change that isn't always in the interest of their own power).

We wanted to avoid players who may not be trustworthy, might break their NDA or quietly take advantage of privileged information or exploits/bugs for their own benefit.

The one thing we did not really get was the one BST applicant we did not hear back from after they were invited (so there is no BST representation other than anyone with an alt). We also could use more PVP representation.

I would add that, you are welcome to make your own player group or other website to discuss things. There are EQ employees who read what everyone is saying, not just the CRC. You are also welcome to PM individual developers, as well as Angeliana with your concerns. Some may not respond or don't check the forums often, but in my tenure on EQ I have seen many non-CRT/CRC members make an impact in this way. My only suggestion there would be to provide data if you can, suggest possible solutions if you have ideas, and try to be respectful.

I think some of your frustrations may be the same as those of existing CRC members. You are not alone and are not different in your interests.

I said the exact same thing in a previous reply. You quoted me quite extensively in a recent reply, maybe you forgot to quote the following:

At least we are in agreement on something.

I think this is a great point. I have mentioned the "official forums" in guildchat and the response from my fellow guidies was a deep hatred and disgust for how they were so poorly treated by other forum posters. As you said, many rank and file EQ players come to the forums only to be ridiculed by the forum elites and as a result they never bother coming back. Everyone loses when people feel bullied and shunned for expressing an opinion.

Much more needs to be done to make the forums a welcoming place for normal players. In truth, the forums represent a small sliver of the totaility of the EQ community.

That's why creating a 3rd party EQ fan site where players can freely discuss and vote on issues, suggestions, etc. for EQ is a good idea. At least we could accumulate a lot of actionable data on many issues affecting a wide diverse group of players. What Darkpaw does with the data is up to them. As a game designer myself, I care about what players thing about the games that I make. Designers and even official paid testers often miss things that intrepid players pick up on. They are not always right or voice opinions that are good for the overall health of the game but they are still worth evaluating.

A Player Council would be a lot of work but I think it would be worth it.