Hi folks!
First off, I wanted to say a big thank you to our incredible VIP community who have graciously allowed me to share this with the rest of you. These Developer Roundtables were exclusive VIP content that I started back up last month, and after putting it to a vote to allow the rest of the community access to these Dev Roundtables, there was an overwhelming consensus to share it with everyone else.
So, here it is, February's Developer Roundtable where I invited Mike (Artois) and Jason (Medawky) from our friendly CS team to jump in and chat with me for an hour about all things CS, so please enjoy. :)
02/22/2019 VIP Roundtable Summary
Featuring: Ben Walters (Kilsin) / Jason Bolton (Medawky) / Mike Butler (Artois)
Kilsin mentions that all support tickets are currently answered by either Artois/Medawky, the unsung heroes of the CS department that keep the needle moving. He then suggests that they will be moving on to the list of preloaded questions that were asked in the February 2019 Roundtable Thread. He opens with a caveat that they will do their best to answer the questions asked, noting that some of their answers will be more of a personal opinion or basic idea of what they are thinking as far as potential direction. It's still too early in the development process for them to have the fine details of a PNP set in stone, but they will respond the best they can to help put our minds at ease.
Question #1: "Knowing that competition for resources is an inherent aspect of an open-world game, will there be a competitive "Spirit of the Game" in Pantheon, or will competition (in general) be considered bad behavior that will need to be regulated by CS?"
Question #2: "Is there any chance of a guide program like EQ had to help with in-game CS stuff?"
Question #3: "Is there a plan to enforce a play nice policy or will you be relying on community policing?"
Question#4: "How does VR plan on dealing with botting/hacking/cheating issues, and how active will your CS team be? Are you actually going to suspend/ban players for breaking the rules or will you allow the rules to be broken and thus embolden these specific players to keep up exactly what they are doing?"
Question #5: "How will tickets be prioritized, and what's the standard expectation for response times?"
Question #6: "Do you have a rough idea of what your staff to player ratio will look like after launch?"
Question #7: "Are there any rough ideas of how any potential scamming may be handled? Some games are completely hands off and let players fend for themselves (buyer beware type thing) -- I am talking about any sort of deliberate scam from one player to another, with proof."
Question #8: "Will characters be able to change their name or transfer realms for a fee?"
Kilsin discusses community feedback and pledges
Question #9: "Will GM's have standard recognizable outfits?"
Artois discusses an update to pledge information
Roundtable transitions to open format for final 12 minutes
TL;DR:
Community matters. Reputation matters. VR is committed to delivering excellent customer service. Community policing will be leaned on. Pantheon will be an open world game and hopes to achieve a fun/healthy sense of competition, but the GM team is cognizant of how things can get out of hand at times and will get involved if players intentionally disrupt the experience of others. The intent of players will be a major consideration for when GM's will get involved, as well as their history, the frequency of their reported negative actions, and severity of any issues they create. VR appreciates community feedback and will be leaning on said community at some point in the future when it comes time to define what they will or will not be responsible for enforcing. Hacking/Botting/Cheating will not be tolerated.
We will likely see threads opened up in the future where some of these topics are discussed in greater detail. There may be some new pledge options added in the future, and it's possible that some of the existing pledges will be revised. A document will be released in an upcoming newsletter that will provide more detailed information on the various pledge perks that players already qualify for, including those from the kickstarter days. There will likely be a guide system at some point but guides won't be considered an official GM nor will they operate as a volunteer representative of the CS team. A play nice policy is in the works but the details won't be finalized until closer to launch. VR cares, listens, and watches. Roenick cheats. Kumu has a very snazzy friend and keeps fun-loving company.
Please just don't turn a play nice policy into a SJW nightmare. The great thing about early mmorpgs like EQ is that the community moderated itself to a certain extent. If you wanted to be a prick, you suffered for it by being less likely to get into groups and such. What we do not need to take the modern day ultra controlling regulations of speech and interaction that rampant political and media manipulation has injected into everything and have it rule the day versus common sense.
Early mmorpgs were about what you could do, with hard work and effort. Not about starting off with an ever growing list of things you can't do or else...
Rallos said:Please just don't turn a play nice policy into a SJW nightmare. The great thing about early mmorpgs like EQ is that the community moderated itself to a certain extent. If you wanted to be a prick, you suffered for it by being less likely to get into groups and such. What we do not need to take the modern day ultra controlling regulations of speech and interaction that rampant political and media manipulation has injected into everything and have it rule the day versus common sense.
Early mmorpgs were about what you could do, with hard work and effort. Not about starting off with an ever growing list of things you can't do or else...
I think you mean you dont want it to be a nanny state. If you want a community to moderate itself efficiently then we need SJW's. Stand up for how you believe the game community should be and teach others or (if unable to teach) exclude those who try to tear the community down.
Too hard for me to follow with only audio and no visual cues, but if someone has the patience to make a full written version, I will be glad to read it.
Anyway: Thanks for sharing more about pantheon every passing year, the team is awesome but the long waiting is a torture.
MauvaisOeil said:Too hard for me to follow with only audio and no visual cues, but if someone has the patience to make a full written version, I will be glad to read it.
Anyway: Thanks for sharing more about pantheon every passing year, the team is awesome but the long waiting is a torture.
Full write up on Reddit from what I saw earlier matey
dorotea said:I think that ...well quite a few threads under General Pantheon discussion focus on how many rules there should be and how they should be enforced. And whether community self-regulation works or doesn't work. Maybe this debate should continue there.
It was mentioned here, in this thread. Why would you think it has to be carried somewhere else? It's not like there's an amazing amount of fodder clogging everything up.
CS is customer service I assume from the context.
While the request is often ignored by many of us (myself included at times) VR has asked that where possible all discussion of significant issues be conducted in threads devoted to those issues if such threads already exist. To make it easier for them to see our suggestions and opinions in one place rather than in many places.
Hokanu said:MauvaisOeil said:Too hard for me to follow with only audio and no visual cues, but if someone has the patience to make a full written version, I will be glad to read it.
Anyway: Thanks for sharing more about pantheon every passing year, the team is awesome but the long waiting is a torture.
Full write up on Reddit from what I saw earlier matey
Thanks mate, that was quite helpfull.