Question for the Devs regarding further community development

You’re fast!

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That’s what the wife says…

That sounds awesome, i am eager to get the response coming out of your meeting next week.
But that is indeed a good alternative for us on case you decide against it.

And thanks for being an awesome dude who can have a bit of fun!

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I looked at the Ashes Of Creation Discord recently. They have several language dedicated discord channels that are moderated by volunteers.

Here’s a short example of their application form for moderators:

Requirements are…

  • At least 18 years old
  • Lots of knowledge about the game
  • Good knowledge of English and German
  • Be helpful, respectful and always polite
  • You can work in a team
  • Good understanding of the Code of Conduct

There will be needed a separate forum section only accessible for moderators to get in contact with fellow moderators and the EHG staff.

Also there has to be a disclaimer made sticky that tells people that

“This channel/section is moderated by volunteers and is not officially sponsored by or have any affiliation with EHG.”

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Yeah that’s some basic stuff that is there since ages. In the Wolcen Discord the guy who did the german translations got mod for the german channel as well. I think after some time you know people you can work with that seem eager to do their part for a brighter future :D.

16 posts were split to a new topic: An Escaped Llama

Unpopular opinion.

I would be very careful giving “fans” power over other players for several reasons.

  1. No real accountability.

  2. They tend to be hardcore fanboys, and may abuse their position by silencing people who complain by labeling them “trolls”.

  3. Often it’s an invitation to unneeded drama.

Now these aren’t directed at anyone specifically in this thread, they come from a very long gaming history. Especially the fanboy mods banning people they disagree with.

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I do personally understand you concerns 100%.

But let me tell you, in case i will become a moderator, I will do everything i can to deal with that kind of behaviour.
In case there will be multiple moderators per language (which is always a good idea, since only having 1 moderator can more easily lead to the issues you have voiced).
I think the moderators among themselves will sort out that thing, if any moderator tries to abuse his power in any form.

I’m still against it, get together, make a fansite, make it the best fansite. EHG doesn’t have to stamp it official and they are insulated from any drama (unless they do something stupid themselves)

I was a mod on The Vault Network and on IGN back in the day. VN was a network of MMO sites. More mods brings with it more drama, not less.

Honestly officially endorsing anything non-employees set up is trouble. It always ends up leading to favoritism and accusations of favoritism. Who do you think gets invited to all the beta’s, behind the scenes stuff, who gets all the swag? Yup, the fansite people, which just spreads the gap between them and regular players even more.

P.S. Even if you are a good moderator (everyone thinks they are), it won’t stop accusations.

Here is a little story, one of the sites I was a mod on was Camelot Vault for the MMO Dark Age of Camelot, one of the boards I moderated was a my server board. Someone on my server, in my realm abused a bug to capture a relic. Obviously the board got into an uproar which I generally allowed as long as it didn’t get too out of hand. Eventually the devs said “yep, it was a bug, we will be resetting the relic”. At that point I said, OK, time to end the flames and attacks on the boards. Immediately I started getting accused of abusing my power to “protect a cheater”. The site admin created a rule you couldn’t mod your own server forum anymore (who wants to mod a different server forum?). That was towards the end of my time there, because it was basically a knife in the back.

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Everyone who want’s to stay sane. Good rule from the site admin but badly executed. Somehow I get the feeling that holding tight to the past won’t make the future any better. Unofficial fan Discords are the most terrible place to be for myself for example but I know these can work. Same goes for fanpages but they normaly work like a charm or die pretty fast, there are no inbetweens.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” - George Santayana

Maybe we were lucky on the Sacred International Forum, but we never had any particular controversies. There were only one or two people who got banned & a few got warned to get their **** together or they’d get banned. That said, it was a bit of a niche game (fewer people on the forums) and it was ~16 years ago (fewer people with internet and **** does that make me feel old!).

I’m not sure if these forums would get as “bad” as PoE’s since that game is free.

IMO, I’ve not experienced a bad “fan” moderator, so that’s likely colouring my experience, but I know fan moderators can be good, because people can be good and set aside their own desires for the good of a community. I also have no doubt that you can get bad fan moderators 'cause people can be dicks. Its ultimately up to the devs to choose the people to manage the forum (paid or not). If they pick a good one, awesome, if they pick a bad one, get rid of the **** and try again. The only downside is that it would suck up their time, likely the CM’s time rather than a programmer though. Not that I’m saying the CM’s time is worth less (oh God, this is like accidentally saying that “yes dear, I do think your arse looks big in that”, time to stop digging…).

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Any updates on this? If you haven’t discussed this topic yet, no problem. Just wanted to check if there are any news.

I really hate to be the annoying dude poking the devs to death with all of my questions, but is there any update on this whole subject yet @Sarno?

I can imagine that you guys are very busy with the recent stuff about the 1.0 update and now the community tester program.

I don’t mind if you guys still need more time to give a absolute answer, i just wish for an update.

Hullo!

This is something we’ve been considering, and I wanted to wait until a certain thing I desired to include in my reply was 100% confirmed and out the door before referring to it here.

While we really do appreciate the interest, we aren’t presently ready to move forward with either forum sections for other languages, or community moderators.

If we were to offer an online space tailored for a specific language, that would likely come with certain expectations. One would be the presence of several moderators fluent in that language who are consistently available. Another is - particularly in cases of moderation performed by community members - the opportunity to appeal any moderation performed.

@Heavy mentioned German, and it’s an example of a language which, to my knowledge, no member of EHG is fluent in. This makes it difficult for us to receive a message written in German pertaining to something edited, locked, or deleted on the forums - or potentially a Discord message erased with no record of what it contained - read it, review the situation, and offer a meaningful reply. While we would be thrilled to see community forums or Discord servers spring up where others are happy to manage them, we don’t currently see a great path forward for this occurring on the official forum or official community Discord server.

I’ve endeavored to be rather subtle here, but the particularly astute among you may have noticed a subtle shift from me previously saying that we would not be addressing the issue of localization until after release to me saying we don’t currently have anything to announce regarding localization. Please don’t view this as confirmation that something will happen prior to release, however due to a variety of factors we’re no longer as rigid in our position of it being something we won’t tackle until after our official launch as we once had been.

I do think there would be greater value to catering to other languages if the game itself was available in those other languages; regardless of whether it’s pre-release or post-release, I do fully anticipate us revising the above decisions at some point in the future. While I know it’s not satisfying to read, unfortunately I honestly don’t have an ETA for this. Even if a specific language isn’t included in the initial roll-out of in-game localization, steps we take to facilitate localization could put us in a better position to cater to it on community platforms.

We do genuinely appreciate the kind offer, and we are always on the lookout for additional ways of collaborating with the community. You may have seen an indication of this recently! :wink:

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I really appreciate the reply, i already expected the slight delay in your answer because of some specifics you wanted to have 100% confirmed before giving us an absolute answer.

While i do feel a little bit of sorrow in my heart now (poor me), your decision is 100% comprehensible for me.

I am genuinely happy to hear that you are supporting any other kind of community projects and i will most likely try to arrange something with the other german guys i am already in contact with.
Important Question:
Just to be one more time 100% sure (because i already had negative experiences in other games with this kind of stuff) you are supporting the promotion of for example a German LE Discord via the forum, in-game chat and your own Official LE Discord, as long as we state that we are not “official”.

Even if the result might not be what i hoped for, again i really do appreciate the open communication you guys have with all kind of topics!

Thank you Sarno!

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Does it need to be supported by EHG? If you want to get your own discord/etc for German language users, you don’t need EHG’s permission.

@XLVI_carpo so we are just some ‘‘german guys’’, i expected some more love from him like besties or soulmates :wink:

I specifically meant the promotion inside official EHG sources. Like the in-game chat or the official forums.
(I already had bad encounters in other games, were devs didn’t want “unofficial” stuff to be promoted via official mediums)

@TriKster @XLVI_carpo You are all just my minions!

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Yes Master! Apologies for @TriKster s thoughtless words. He’s young and doesn’t know better. It’s not his fault. Please don’t punish him!

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