Weekly Discussion Thread #1: Transparency

【Weekly Discussion Thread #1】​

Introduction
Hello Everyone, I hope you are all having a great day. Today i would like to start the first edition of the Weekly Discussion Thread. This set of threads will be as the title implies, a place where community and content team / staff team can come together and discuss about topics that are quite important for the game.

Why this project?
While having conversations with multiple people (community members, staff and CT members) i found out that there are quite a few things regarding the game that people dont agree with. Especially after my conversation with @SilverMirror things really started to shine through. Wynncraft isn't a perfect place, game design and community wise, but no game is. There is always things that can improve, there needs to be change, which is the goal I hope to achieve with this project.

Transparency
As a first subject of this discussion thread i chose a quite fitting one: transparency, or two-way-communication if you want to call it that. When designing and balancing a game, two-way-communication between the community and the content team is necessary. But after playing this game for more than 5 years, i can still say that to this day it is still lacking in Wynncraft.

Now there have been improvements since the release of Wynncraft, the forums and the official discord are great ways where the community can stay in touch with eachother, and the item team is a great bridge between players and CT that was missing for a long time, but more on that later. Yet, something still feels off, and i can't be the only one having this feeling. Communication on changes happen once a blue moon, if at all. While there now are things like Selvut's Special Warning thread, those are minor things in a big picture.

We as players, as a community, have no idea what is going on on the CT side of things. We hardly get updates on anything that is happening or going to happen, all caused by the lack of communication. Now i know the CT hates giving out a release date, and hates teasing upcoming features, but please for the love of god let us know something. This does not only apply for updates, but for game-design aswell. While item balancing is a topic i will handle in another edition of the discussion thread, it fits in this topic too. This however, brings us to the item team.

The Item Team
The Item team was a great step in the right direction, filling in the gap that needed to be filled between players and CT (for item balance atleast). Yet, there are still problems here. One of the main issues here is that while there is communication between parties, it is mostly one-way-communication. We as players are free to give feedback to the Item Team, which really helps them balance items. The problem that i have is the lack of response. We never know what the Item team is working on, just like the CT and updates. While being able to suggest things to balance the game more is nice, there really needs to be more voice from the Item team itself. Let us know your opinion aswel, We are players, but you guys are still the people that have to balance, so your opinions is as important as ours, if not more. I feel like there needs to be more discussion about items and builds, which ones are good, which ones are bad, not only from the players side, but also from the Item teams side. Once this two-way-communication becomes a thing, we can satisfy both parties.

Another issue is people not understanding the importance of the item team. They just ignore them, sometimes even make fun of them, but they are the people that make the game that we love and play today. We need to show more respect towards them, and most importantly, let them hear from us, because our voices together can make this game a better and more balanced place for everyone, and in the end, that's what matters.

Discussion time
Now i would like to hear what you guys this. Do you think the communication in Wynncraft happens flawless? Or is there a need for change? If so, what needs to change? Let me know what you all think, players and content team/staff team. Everyone's voice here matters and will only make it easier to resolve the certain issues these threads are designed to solve.

Until next time,

RemRin out.

 

I totally agree with you. The communication between the CT and players is lacking,
I understand the need to keep secrets and to build up suspense and hype, but we so far, have very little idea of any future changes, until they are released. Remember the Gavel Update? All we really knew was that there was going to be a big island with.... "stuff"
Same with Dern, big place with "stuff" We don't know what degree of stuff will be in it, since Gavel was ment to have no corruption and decay instead but we all know how that turned out.
I do agree the item team was nice, but I feel no major change came out of it.

 

I think the CT is relatively good compared to other games I’ve played, mostly because they’re part of the community. Many games I’ve played have reactionary dev teams. This is when the dev’s change something, and if the player base doesn’t like it they change it back. I think this method isn’t always beneficial because it can stop the developers from making the game they want. Transparency is important, but both sides have to trust each other for any real discussion to affect the game.

 

Yeet ? idk what to reply im meme-less tday

 

It would be pretty nice if a small teaser picture of an upcoming update would be posted every month. Not having any text, or any form of explanation. Just a picture to make the community talk about. But I can mostly see why they probably don't do this, but it would cool and cause constant speculation and excitement, without having too giant promises.

 

Thanks for the tag, that discussion is indeed eventful.

The item team mainly conducts item and gameplay balance, we look at whats wrong about the game and we try our best to alleviate the problem. On top of that, we also acts as a bridge between the development side and the community side of wynncraft, we listen to feedbacks and opinons and make changes if need be, and occationally, we reflect crucial feedbacks to the higher-ups that might impact the future development of the game. Please dont look down on us or be afraid of us, we meme and we cool :p

Personally, as both an item team member and a content team member, I do agree that more transparency can be beneficial especially the amount of information we are allowed to give to players. Me myself and some of the other item team members already frequently engage in discussions with the community but we are limited with the amount of information we can give. Obviously there are major things that we ought to keep secret, but I'd feel more comfortable if the development side can trust the player base more, letting the community know of future changes and getting feedback prior to mistakes being made is crucial in improving game, in my personal opinon that is.

However, I'd like to also point out that more information doesnt mean auto better gameplay, or auto better communication. While it eases the hunger for new content from you guys, it also ruins the surprise to the degree. If careless information is released about certain things, especially about items, it may affect the economy or gameplay to a bitter end.

All in all, the item team and the content team is doing our best to communicate to you guys while improving the game for everyone. However, we are all humans and we are all volunteers, there are limits to what we can do, please understand.

Hope to talk to you guys in the future :)

 

A....ARE YOU HAISE

 

What do I think about transparency? Good question.
First, I'll define transparency as a communication between content creators and content consumers about the content they are making.
Sorry for that ^ terribly complicated sentence, but I think it's good to know what I'm talking about before I talk about it.

I think that transparency is beneficial to the game and the community, and the current level of CT - player communication is a bit too low. I find the problem is that the staff and CT are predominantly lurkers on the forums, and although they are constantly listening to the community and what they have to say, they contribute very little to the conversations going on. Salted, Grian, Jumla, and JP are very rarely found in a normal thread, very rarely seen being people that are part of the community. That's all I have to say about what I think the problem is.

To clarify, I do think that the level of transparency is low, but transparency is not as essential as the staff and CT contributing to the community

 

lmfaoo

 

Well, for starters, we are not allowed to hint changes unless stated otherwise. That goes for the rest of the CT as well. I asked Grian once about that and the reply was they, the CT, don't want to create a No Man's Sky scenario, where they would hype something up only to lead to mass disappointment. I get that, but in my personal opinion, I think the risk would be worth it. I strongly believe Wynncraft members should have more insight into the development and to be given more spoilers and/or discussions from the high end.

Okay, so:
a) Item Team has come to agreement not to reply to the same thread if a member is already handling it. When you post a feedback or a similar thread, 5-6 of us could instantly jump in and give our thoughts. Issue is, from the OP's point, it can easily seem like we are trying to gang up on them and push our agendas. We don't want that, I don't want to make it seem like we are trying to shut down opinions or discussions by creating a large number of replies in a short time span in order to bury people with replies.

b) I'm tired of endless discussions that lead to nothing. People are stubborn, they refuse to accept other opinions, and I just don't have time for that. People are ready to debate about subjective stuff for hours while totally ignoring other opinions which can be as much as valid as theirs. I don't have time for that nor do I need that in my life, sorry.

c) A no-win situation.
I can do 2 things. Either reply to a person or not reply at all. Often, both decisions were wrong.
When I did reply, people called me names, told me they hated me, said I was trying to shut their opinions down while I only stated the official stance on certain things, that I was throwing replies just to spite them.
When I didn't reply, and the rest of the team didn't, we got a "y u no talk to community IM?" situation, and IM should be anything but that.

My life is a lot easier if I just keep quiet, and that's down to the community. IM isn't obligated to talk to you. We could go into a complete silence and we would be fine, so next time you be like "why don't you talk to me", ask yourself if you deserved it. Cause a lot of times, a lot of the people didn't.
I understand things like that come with the position, but if I can avoid it, I will. I seriously don't need negativity in my life.

 

Salted released a gif to give us some teaser on the next update...

 

Been wondering about this a bit and I've heard some suggestions from both the IMs and community about a potential buff/nerf thread. Could easily lump that in with Special Warning since it's pinned and already has the req changes. Will mull it over with the IMs. If it changes you'll see it.

 

I agree. What I see when discussions are opened is that some people, after, say, a change to an item, reach out to the item team and ask them to justify this new change/item. Then when the item team responds, the thread OP gets mad that they justified their change/item (even though that's what they asked for). It's fine to not agree with someone, but sometimes I feel as if people aggressively push their agenda on how this change/item should be balanced while pointedly ignoring some of the logic the item team puts out there to justify their actions (and acknowledging some of it). This is what I've seen recently.

As for transparency, there is obviously a limit to how much can be shared. Right now, it feels like the CT are off in some other world, doing their own thing while the game plods on without them. Then, bam! an update/bugfix/etc and the game is changed. And the CT goes back into their world and we're left in the dark. It feels as if the community is very cut off from what the CT are doing. This lack of communication is what I believe a contributing factor in what is the, ah, laying-of-blame upon members of the CT and resent towards them for doing things. Now, whether these things should or should not have been done is up for discussion, but I feel as if a lot of times resentment is held towards the CT because of this lack of communication. It's all so sudden, and when we get big updates like the Gameplay Update that changes how the game works to some larger extent, this change, which has been known for a week or so, is just.. too sudden. People don't have time to acclimate.
I also feel as if some gameplay changes are too drastic. Take Pure, for example (although I'm sure this is an example you already know). It was OP af until the glitch got patched, and then.. it was useless. Now I understand that Salted is in charge of mythic balancing and that nobody could do anything about it, but I feel as if something could have been done about the long time that Pure was basically useless (it's still relatively underpowered.. I think? I don't know, I know almost nothing about item balancing and I don't know what Pure's ids are). Another factor in the huge impact of Pure's nerf was that before it, it was being used for an endgame wand.. but it was lvl 65 or something. This is also the reason (I believe) that mage felt so underpowered after the heal nerf. After playing with mage almost exclusively after the nerf, the new heal is sufficient. But it's certainly not the old heal (which is fine - the old heal was overpowered. I find the new heal to be balanced).

People who are not connected to the forums or who only occasionally browse the forums might also be caught by surprise by a new update. I believe there should be a better way of notifying people who don't really visit the forums to know about updates. I know there is an announcements page on the website but it's not in the most prime of spots - personally, if I were to go to the Wynncraft website, I'd be going there for the map or item guide. The map has its own URL so if I want to get to the map there is no reason for me to visit the other parts of the website. If I go to the item guide, I go to one of the tabs on the top and click on that. The announcements page is not even shown - you have to scroll down to reach it (at least for my monitor - the banner [the one with the Wynncraft logo and the warrior overlooking the canyon of the lost] covers the whole window). This is inconvenient and unintuitive, for me (personally). I understand that it would be different for other people, although, I assume, not so different (1: my monitor's aspect ratio is 16:9, which is a very common aspect ratio if you don't have a widescreen monitor, and 2: I cannot really think of other reasons as to why people would visit the Wynncraft website, and if they know about Wynndata there is even less reason to visit the website). There are two ways I can think of that could solve this problem: a: when visiting the website, a popup would show that has a new update/patch's features, like the announcements page.. but it's a popup. People are sure to see it when they visit the website. The name of the patch notes/update should also be large and flashy. Of course, this would get annoying on multiple visits of the website and without accounts, I don't see a way for the message to stop popping up for a person. Also I don't know if this is already a thing. The second is there could be a text popup in the Wynncraft chat (like the ones that encourage the player to go to discord or the wynncraft subreddit). Again, I don't know if this is already a thing. But having an update sprung on you with little to no warning is not a pleasant experience. Of course, you could just say that people should visit the website/forums more, but some people won't. I also realize that it is impossible to account for everybody and every possibility. A suggestion like this would also not be top-priority.

Anyhow, those are my two bits. Sorry if I rambled.. a lot. I didn't really have a structure for this. I hope I got my points across.

 

I love this. Looking forward to next week and weeks to come
I however somewhat disagree with the subject of the post. Not regarding item team but more the rest of us. I think other games that benefit from high levels of transparency are also games that have more frequent smaller updates than what Wynn has. If we as CT go and tell you something about next update now, it might not be another 5-10 months before you see that ingame. And that's way more toxic for everyone that not telling people at all.

 

IMs can change mythics.

 

You have to realise that even people who are on the content team are not even told everything to prevent leaks etc. Since the more people that know the full picture for an update the more collateral damage that could occur. To be honest transparency will always be a problem since regular content team members are strictly not allowed to reveal or have discussions of anything about upcoming updates and for a good reason albeit.

 

Honestly, this was the biggest reason why I stopped playing before Gavel came out. Yeah there were the teasers and the hype (oh god was there hype, pretty sure half the player base had heart attacks when it finally came) but just not enough info was there about what was actually coming in the update or more importantly WHEN, I would have been more than willing to wait for the two years if I had known beforehand what a wait we were in for.
Dern is now the new Gavel, we are all waiting for it come with no knowledge of when or what's going to be in it, even just a tentative date, like "next year" I, and I think many of the players, don't need a month named for it. On that note, some more info on what is going to be in future updates would be really really nice. Just something to give us hope for future features or get us thinking about how awesome the next update is going to be.
If they are worried about updates building hype and then being a let down then they really don't need to release a whole lot of info. Seriously just some basic stuff like; the number of quests, maybe say that there are going to be a few new items or some new gameplay mechanics. Don't give specifics of course, just tell us what sort of things are coming! And not just for the big updates like Corkus, Gavel and Road to Dern. Even the small little gameplay ones, it would be nice to know whats coming in them a week or so beforehand so that people can change builds and what not.


The lack of communicating between the CT and the community is something that definitely needs to be fixed and I am soooo glad that you made this thread.

 

Is there any chance of a livestream to show how it's going? Like there was with Corkus?

 

As you may have seen the moderation team has been working on it since last month now.