Player Council 2nd Term: Discussion

DeletedUser54192

Guest
Please use this thread to discuss any ideas, game concepts, issues or anything else that you feel the Player's Council should bring up with Inno. Also, please put any feedback about the council here. Please try to keep this thread free of spam.

Thanks, and we look forward to hearing your comments.
 

Fluvisol

Phrourach
Nobody from .en represented us on the GPC Skype Call - why?
Does this mean none of the concerns and ideas from the .en forums were discussed?
 

Rachel.L

Phrourach
limited spots; not all platforms are represented on each call, same as last term
what EN issues?
what new discussions have we had? i see one council member posting since election and explanation of the reasonable absence of another
but the others are mia without cause and there have been no requests for our input... no discussion threads, no reports of talks had by others
every time a member of this community has tagged council and asked for feedback, no response
and the CM and mods have not held those gpc members accountable for their absence
i ask again, @Fluvisol, what ideas?

*screenshot
 
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Fluvisol

Phrourach
As to the limited spots, completely forgot about that - I blame sleep deprivation due to a little human deciding to keep me awake more than grep
Though I do think .en should be represented, even if only due to the fact that together with us we're the only markets where nightbonus is turned off (optional for US and to my knowledge - correct me if I'm wrong). Makes for a whole different perspective on some aspects from what I've gathered from my time in the NL worlds

There were a few posts in the ideas/concern thread (which was the same one as used before but w/e works)
And we all have people in our alliances who complain but don't post here, and skype world chats usually have a lot of people complaining too
All I'm saying is that just because the proper media to post it weren't set up doesn't mean there wasn't any input
 

DeletedUser31931

Guest
I agree that it is somewhat unacceptable that the us servers have so much deeper and more active discussions (and the threads in which to actually have these discussions) when those forums are essentially dead compared to here. En has four to five times the player base of the us server (I use these two as an example, as they are the English speaking servers) but such little discussion that goes directly to the devs?
 

Rachel.L

Phrourach
agreed that EN has one of the largest markets and so should have a rep on calls
i don't see why inno needs so many reps and there aren't more player reps

as to ideas....
1) if it isn't in the forum, it doesn't count
as we've seen from sportsmanship and other issues, skype, discord, and other non-inno discussions "do not exist"
also, discussed ig doesn't count unless it is also brought here
2) continuing discussions must have X# of new posts or they are considered dead (idk what x equals)
the topics listed in the US servers were based on new* issues brought up in discussions from the second term (all servers) batting ideas around and finding interest
* this is what i have intuited/ translated from multiple places but could be wrong
some of these are old ideas to EN but new to other servers or weren't addressed last term and have been moved to the head of the list
3) complaints listed around the forum but not specifically in the gpc section don't count
they must be listed in this set of threads otherwise they are considered mod/ CM only issues

anyone who is a mod, CM, GPC member, or GPC advisor, please feel free to correct this info if it is wrong
*screenshot
 

Baudin Toolan

Grepolis Team
I'll address why we prefer feedback and discussion to be done on the forum and why the GPC stuff is better done in one location. When we give feedback, be it GPC or general community feedback that Rich and I send to Inno weekly, it helps if that feedback is in a location the devs can see. I personally prefer game feedback to happen in the acropolis section in the various changelog update threads, event threads, or threads created by the players in the acropolis about a specific feature/issue. This helps me collect it, organize it, and send send it to Inno. Same thing for the GPC, it helps if the discussion about what issues the GPC should bring up to Inno are all in one spot.

In regards to considering threads "dead" I don't really do that but I do keep track of up to where in a thread I have forwarded feedback from. If new posts about a topic are made in an existing thread weeks after it was primarily active but those new posts are feedback I'll still pass it along to Inno. For the GPC having this new thread for general discussion probably makes it easier to find out what new things should be brought up or what old things weren't addressed in the first GPC term.
 

DeletedUser54192

Guest
Right. I will try and get some basic answers out to the people who have posted on this thread so far. If you need more detail, then feel free to ask, but it's not going to happen tonight.

@Fluvisol
  • No EN participant for multiple reasons. First, there is a limit of 3-5 Inner Council members per call. It was implied that the CAB representative would take one of those 3-5 spots. There are always going to be markets that don't get to participate in specific calls, and including CAB in the count restricts this further. Furthermore, both myself and DizzlJoe have been indisposed recently, due to RL (as I mentioned in the first of the two updates that I posted last week). This meant that the 5 spots were full before we got there. DizzlJoe was still indisposed up until after the call, to the best of my knowledge, and I would have been unable to participate in this call for personal reasons (which is why I volunteered as the Inner Council substitute, rather than as the main Inner Council representative). I do not know if we would have been allowed to bring in one of the Local Council (Erik or Hyper) for the purposes of the call, however they both appear to be MIA, rendering that point mute.
  • No, it does not mean that. EN opinions and points of view were involved in discussions on the discord chat and the beta forum, with members of other councils. When there is a Skype call, the participants take the call topics from a combined list of ideas put forward by all communities, not just their own.

@Rachel.L
  • I know I have been behind in terms of replying and encouraging discussions. Both IC members have been indisposed for a while. I am trying to make up for that now, despite the fact that my RL pressures haven't really decreased.
  • In terms of holding GPC members to account, that is a difficult situation. We haven't done as much as we should have, as I have admitted before. However it could be said to be awkward to chase us up on a lack of action, when we still have not received a replacement 5th council member in exchange for the one who did not confirm their status after the election results. We are in the wrong, but perhaps it's not just the council members who have fallen behind.

@Fluvisol / @Rachel.L
  • Ideas can be mentioned all over the place, yes. In-game in forums/messages, here on the external forums or the private messages, and on Skype. That's 5 different mediums to collect different ideas from, not counting the way that ideas are handled on this forum (they can be posted in two completely separate forum tabs, one of which has a system which practically hides anything that breaks a set of arbitrary DNS rules that don't even exist for other communities). This makes it rather hard to collate, especially as some ideas thrown in are done so with no format, meaning that it's our job to make the ideas understandable as well as collect them. I will do what I can to catch up on things that I may have missed, however there is a limit to what one person can do.

@Tusc2010
  • I completely understand where you are coming from. However I would also ask that you have a closer look at the Ideas forums. We may have a much larger player base than other communities, however when it comes to discussing ideas, it looks to be the same few faces that are willing to discuss people's ideas in any sort of depth, as opposed to "I like/love/dislike/hate this".

@Rachel.L
  • We do need to make sure we have an EN presence in calls. It is the international market. However it is unlikely that we would be able to demand a guaranteed slot on calls, especially as we've had evidence that the developers don't necessarily regard us as the flagship community. (I refer to the fact that the DE community were actively given the opportunity to design a new hero for an event (the winning entry being Eurybia), while any attempt to design similar gameplay aspects on the EN forum are shunted off into the wishlist and are therefore prevented from even being sent to the developers.) In this case, a combination of factors prevented EN from taking part. We shall do our best to ensure this doesn't happen again.

To summarise:
  • Yes, it would have been good to have an EN representative on this call. Due to a number of reasons, this wasn't possible on this occasion, for which I apologise.
  • The lack of an EN participant in the call doesn't mean that EN ideas and opinions are not considered: the representatives on the call take ideas from all communities.
  • There is input, however the variety of mediums through which they come, and the feasibility and quality of the ideas ranges dramatically, making it hard to collate/edit/format them, especially with our currently limited manpower.
  • I apologise. Yes, we have fallen behind. No, we haven't done as much as we perhaps should. However I am trying to make amends for this as best I can. If you have specific, reasonable ways that you think I can improve in my role (neither cloning myself nor devoting 24 hours a day to Grepolis count as reasonable :p), then PM me. My inbox is open, as I have said on multiple occasions. But I can't read minds.
Thank you for your feedback so far. I will do my best to work on what has been brought up.
 

DeletedUser31931

Guest
@Tusc2010
  • I completely understand where you are coming from. However I would also ask that you have a closer look at the Ideas forums. We may have a much larger player base than other communities, however when it comes to discussing ideas, it looks to be the same few faces that are willing to discuss people's ideas in any sort of depth, as opposed to "I like/love/dislike/hate this".

Yes, this is a tricky problem for sure. I don't mean to sound dejected or anything, but around 24 hours ago I posted a perfectly-formatted idea that I think would be good (and easy) to implement, but haven't got a single response. Maybe I was a bit too longwinded, but at the very least it's an idea that should have some controversy. Figtree did great work with the section over the last year(?) but still so few use it. It's arguably the most interesting and important section (other than announcements) and would be nice to find a way to draw more people there.
 

DeletedUser54192

Guest
Yes, this is a tricky problem for sure. I don't mean to sound dejected or anything, but around 24 hours ago I posted a perfectly-formatted idea that I think would be good (and easy) to implement, but haven't got a single response. Maybe I was a bit too longwinded, but at the very least it's an idea that should have some controversy. Figtree did great work with the section over the last year(?) but still so few use it. It's arguably the most interesting and important section (other than announcements) and would be nice to find a way to draw more people there.
It is an interesting idea, and definitely worth discussing. I read it yesterday, however I didn't have time to reply to it. I'm just one person, with a job and other RL priorities: I do what I can, but with limited time on a laptop (2-step verification and writing long posts are both a pain on mobile), my priorities in the last day or so were to post the approved call report, and respond to feedback on that. When I discuss an idea, I try to be thorough, so I won't just throw a 1-2 line comment out there, I'm more likely to wait until I have the chance to write proper feedback.

24 hours can be quite a tight turn around for most people using these externals, as it is added on top of whatever time they spend on gameplay. It probably didn't help that a number of the people who'd normally be interested in discussing an idea were focused on the GPC call report, which people had been waiting for since the call last Friday.

I'll try and get a response to your idea sometime today.
 

DeletedUser31931

Guest
You misunderstand me completely, Kal. :) I was not whining for attention, but rather giving an example for the issue you pointed out...our participation levels in the ideas tab is simply abysmal compared to the number of people using these external forums (not that it's great either lol).
 

DeletedUser44867

Guest
...our participation levels in the ideas tab is simply abysmal compared to the number of people using these external forums (not that it's great either lol).

The participation in forums in general seems to be lacking significantly from what it used to be, especially when comparing to some of the other servers who do have huge responses on most of their threads. (although, in fairness some servers would probably say the same about ours.) I usually see pretty big conversations about these things in other chatting tools, just not so much in the forums.

We also don't really have a huge draw to the forums anymore though. There used to be a large number of competitions, mini goals for worlds (like 1st to rim a moderator, etc.) that you just don't quite see anymore. The competitions is an interesting one for me, personally, having done mini-gold rewards for newspaper games in the past. Most of my alliance members didn't bother participating because the amount of gold wasn't worth it - with gold trading it's fairly easy to get that amount of gold - giving out 500 gold for solving a crossword puzzle once every other month just isn't cutting it anymore.
 

DeletedUser44426

Guest
Not only was gold given as a reward, but temporary, sometimes permanent titles were given to players as a reward as well. Though not as appealing as gold, I did receive a temporary title as Muse in the Lit section, and I personally enjoyed having it. All in all, competitions were an exceptionally huge part of the forums back in the day,
 

DeletedUser31931

Guest
There is a competition currently in the Beta forums, published today. I believe the same competition will be posted here soon, assuming it goes well? Or do I misunderstand? I haven't perused the beta world forums very often in the past. Every server has it's own competitions, but it seems a bit pointless that the beta server's forums would get one when so few actively play there. The post could easily be copied over.
 
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Baudin Toolan

Grepolis Team
The forum comps are my fault, I've been very busy but we'll get back to them on a regular basis soon. As for the custom titles those are harder to do now since we switched forum software so I don't have any plans to give them out atm. Overall activity on our forum is pretty good in comparison to other servers. Whenever there is a big topic, new event/ingame mechanic change/new feature, I always have a ton of feedback on the forum that I can send along to the devs. You lot are very outspoken which is great.
 

DeletedUser31931

Guest
The forum comps are my fault, I've been very busy but we'll get back to them on a regular basis soon. As for the custom titles those are harder to do now since we switched forum software so I don't have any plans to give them out atm. Overall activity on our forum is pretty good in comparison to other servers. Whenever there is a big topic, new event/ingame mechanic change/new feature, I always have a ton of feedback on the forum that I can send along to the devs. You lot are very outspoken which is great.
Completely understandable to put real life first, I wasn't trying to call you or anyone else out. Is there something wrong with just copying the post of a CM in another region though? It doesn't seem necessary to put in so much time and effort creating unique competitions for each of the 3 (en, us, beta...am I forgetting one?) english speaking forums, when putting the same one here as there would have much the same effect.
 

DeletedUser44867

Guest
Completely understandable to put real life first, I wasn't trying to call you or anyone else out. Is there something wrong with just copying the post of a CM in another region though? It doesn't seem necessary to put in so much time and effort creating unique competitions for each of the 3 (en, us, beta...am I forgetting one?) english speaking forums, when putting the same one here as there would have much the same effect.

Unrelated to the copying from another forum thing, but just a conversation point:
A bit of a catch-22, as well. Players don't really participate that much in competitions anymore that I see, so you get to the point where it seems a bit useless to make competitions. That's my issue with newspapers. After the 3rd or 4th issue people just stop reading them or stop reacting to them altogether. I like making them and like interviewing people, but I don't particularly want to take the time to make something if no one is really going to do it anyways. So you do less, less people come, which makes you want to do it less, which makes less people come. nice little cycle there.

I think to really get the forums back to their liveliness that it once had, we'd need competitions that had a big enough reward to have a big draw to it, and we'd also need more people to be consistently around the forums and making them more engaging. The days of auto-updating maps and the mini-world race competitions are over. We used to have people who would track milestones for every world - some of which were just plain silly, and that was fun. Not too much of that anymore.
 

DeletedUser31931

Guest
Yeah it's a tricky situation. Forum competitions are often looked to as the answer to all inactivity issues, because it's an easy thing to complain about and they do help to some degree, but they aren't an instant fix by any means.
 

DeletedUser44867

Guest
Yeah it's a tricky situation. Forum competitions are often looked to as the answer to all inactivity issues, because it's an easy thing to complain about and they do help to some degree, but they aren't an instant fix by any means.
i see competitions more as the way to get people to look at the forums, but there needs to be something there that will make them want to stay, talk, and debate, etc.
it's easy to implement the competition to get the draw, especially if you have a decent enough prize, but we don't have much to actually retain people anymore
 
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