Organizing
Soren
Member, Developer Posts: 48
It's only been a week since NWN:EE was announced and already the forums here are buzzing with activity, a clear testament to the excitement caused by nearly a decade of wishing for something like this to happen. I understand why someone who haven't been involved with the game before might wonder what's so great about the EE, especially if you only judge it by the videos and screenshots released so far, but just wait until these new opportunities are unleashed to the creativity of this community and it will become abundantly clear.
But the large amount of activity here also means that we are bound to loose overview if we don't consider and plan out how we discuss, make suggestions and give feedback. This does not only make it chaotic for ourselves by generating a lot of overlaps and redundancy, but as a community, I also think one of the best ways to help Beamdog here is to keep things focused and organized so that they don't have to spend a lot of time reading through pages of posts potentially missing significant points and ideas.
Therefore, what I propose is that we try to decide on how to do things best through a collective deliberation - partly to make sure that all needs here are satisfied (within a sensible compromise), but equally so to strengthen to sense of community and make sure everyone feels included. It's great with personal initiatives, but we should take care not to end up competing amongst ourselves, where how things are done is determined by whoever did it first.
That said, I do want to share some ideas, but the following suggestions should be taken as just that - suggestions. And if people find it sensible at all, I hope it will only serve as a starting point of discussion, not a claim for an ultimate solution.
Anyway, this is what I had in mind:
First of all, as for the overall framework of how to share ideas, I think it would be an obvious choice to separate the 'pinned' feedback and suggestions topics we have now into one for each sub forum. Not only does this help with keeping the general discussion forum less cluttered, but it also means that the various suggestions are discussed and reviewed by those who are involved with the general field and frequent that sub forum.
However even then, I think it would make sense to keep two different suggestions and requests topic within some of the sub forums:
- In the custom content forum, there's both the art content (suggestions pertaining to aiding in the creation of 3d models, textures, sounds etc.) and then things like new gameplay features (such as opening up new possibilities for adding new feats, classes etc.)
- In the general discussion forum here, there could both be a topic for suggesting "within game" content (actual feats, classes etc.) and one for the more general suggestions for the game (e.g. enhancing the graphics engine, adding a content downloader etc.)
Since there's already a number of suggestion topics with a lot of posts already, it may perhaps already be too late to reorganize, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to throw the idea out there.
Aside from that, I think it may also be an idea to have a relevant topic with useful links for each sub forum (e. g. linking to the nwnlexicon in the scripting section and nwnlist.com in the multiplayer section), perhaps even with someone managing each subforum that is knowledgeable of the subject so that they can pinpoint what is essential.
Finally, I think it would also be an idea to have some simple guidelines for providing feedback posted somewhere. One thing that comes mind regarding that, is that we should all help each other keeping things tidy by linking people to the correct topic or forum if something has been misplaced, and link to prior topics or posts if it's something that has already been brought up.
It may be that I'm just overthinking all this though, and I know that ultimately all this is up to the forum moderators. But still, what does the rest of you think regarding all this? Both hoping for comments on the subject as a whole and on the concrete elements of it, as well as hearing your own ideas.
Thanks!
But the large amount of activity here also means that we are bound to loose overview if we don't consider and plan out how we discuss, make suggestions and give feedback. This does not only make it chaotic for ourselves by generating a lot of overlaps and redundancy, but as a community, I also think one of the best ways to help Beamdog here is to keep things focused and organized so that they don't have to spend a lot of time reading through pages of posts potentially missing significant points and ideas.
Therefore, what I propose is that we try to decide on how to do things best through a collective deliberation - partly to make sure that all needs here are satisfied (within a sensible compromise), but equally so to strengthen to sense of community and make sure everyone feels included. It's great with personal initiatives, but we should take care not to end up competing amongst ourselves, where how things are done is determined by whoever did it first.
That said, I do want to share some ideas, but the following suggestions should be taken as just that - suggestions. And if people find it sensible at all, I hope it will only serve as a starting point of discussion, not a claim for an ultimate solution.
Anyway, this is what I had in mind:
First of all, as for the overall framework of how to share ideas, I think it would be an obvious choice to separate the 'pinned' feedback and suggestions topics we have now into one for each sub forum. Not only does this help with keeping the general discussion forum less cluttered, but it also means that the various suggestions are discussed and reviewed by those who are involved with the general field and frequent that sub forum.
However even then, I think it would make sense to keep two different suggestions and requests topic within some of the sub forums:
- In the custom content forum, there's both the art content (suggestions pertaining to aiding in the creation of 3d models, textures, sounds etc.) and then things like new gameplay features (such as opening up new possibilities for adding new feats, classes etc.)
- In the general discussion forum here, there could both be a topic for suggesting "within game" content (actual feats, classes etc.) and one for the more general suggestions for the game (e.g. enhancing the graphics engine, adding a content downloader etc.)
Since there's already a number of suggestion topics with a lot of posts already, it may perhaps already be too late to reorganize, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to throw the idea out there.
Aside from that, I think it may also be an idea to have a relevant topic with useful links for each sub forum (e. g. linking to the nwnlexicon in the scripting section and nwnlist.com in the multiplayer section), perhaps even with someone managing each subforum that is knowledgeable of the subject so that they can pinpoint what is essential.
Finally, I think it would also be an idea to have some simple guidelines for providing feedback posted somewhere. One thing that comes mind regarding that, is that we should all help each other keeping things tidy by linking people to the correct topic or forum if something has been misplaced, and link to prior topics or posts if it's something that has already been brought up.
It may be that I'm just overthinking all this though, and I know that ultimately all this is up to the forum moderators. But still, what does the rest of you think regarding all this? Both hoping for comments on the subject as a whole and on the concrete elements of it, as well as hearing your own ideas.
Thanks!
0
Comments
If we continue to add categories to this subforum it will become harder and harder to track threads, find similar topics and so on.
Also, there're several suggestions threads. All those threads, as well as any other threads in the NWN:EE section, are being read by me, and the appropriate information is being passed to the higher channels.