33 réponses à ce sujet

[Challseus]

I figured I would wait until well after the new year in order to write this topic. Well, here we are...

I want to preface this post by saying that I really like the Social Site as a whole, and that I am big proponent of potential in general. I really feel like this site has the potential to become the best site for all things Dragon Age. That said, I do have some concerns.

I know I am not the first person (nor the last) to say this, but the Project Page really needs some changes. There are many things that could be changed (i.e. rating system), but I just want to focus on one: Visibility. More specifically, how people are supposed to find downloadable content, as opposed to work in progress content. Here are some actual playable custom campaigns:

• Little Red Riding Hood Redux
• Fragments of Ferelden
• Enigma Battle Dungeon and Arena
• Kal-Sharok: The Crumbling City
• Monster Mash

There may be more, I wouldn't be able to tell though, unless I sifted through all 163 of them! The only reason I even know about these is because I practically live on the site... What about  the more casual user? They may stop after going to 10 projects that are only works in progress. Also, I can only imagine this problem getting worse as time goes on.

I guess my general questions are:

1) Does Bioware know/care about this issue?
2) If yes to #1, or there plans in place for changes?
3) If yes to #2, do you want suggestions?

Many times, we have been told that if we simply post about issues we are having, they will be addressed in some way, shape, or form. Well, this is probably the 10th thread about this particular problem, and as far as I know, we haven't heard anything back. For me personally, just a "we plan on making changes at some point, there are just higher priority things at the moment" would suffice for me.

Thank you.

*********************************************************

To anyone who responds, please don't hijack this thread by doing of the following:

1) Insisting Bioware is run by monkeys, and the Social Site is a failure.
2) Going on and on about how DAModders or DANexus are better sites. We've already had those threads. This is about the Social Site, not any other site.

Thank you.

[FalloutBoy]

I think the numbers pretty much speak for themselves:

Fragments of Ferelden downloads:
Social Site: 480
"Other site": 1682

Kal Sharok downloads:
Social Site: 269
"Other site": 2129

I am not going to speculate as to why this is. You guys at BW should be smart enough to figure it out yourselves if you care enough to do so. I will mention that a lot of people have been warning that this would happen since before the game came out. Right now the only thing keeping me from scrapping my project altogether is that "other site".

I would also mention that I do appreciate the efforts of the BW devs that participate on the forums. My issues are with the lack of progress made in the organization of this site. I have basically given up on it until I see something that indicates that there is anyone actually working on it.

Modifié par FalloutBoy, 14 janvier 2010 - 09:10 .

[Snoteye]

Challseus wrote...

2) If yes to #1, or there plans in place for changes?

According to a random developer post in one of the many other project interface redesign threads, major changes are planned. No word on what or when. Personally I'd just like to see it replaced by a tag based system.

[doctorofdarkness]

One positive thing I have noticed is the recent proliferation of quite a few threads in the main forum section asking about available mods. If there's enough of them about- as in, if people are clearly heading for that forum for mod info- maybe it *would* be possible to get a stickied thread in general discussion, simply to stop the threads from cluttering up the forum.

[Jeff Rousell]

Challseus wrote...

1) Does Bioware know/care about this issue?
2) If yes to #1, or there plans in place for changes?
3) If yes to #2, do you want suggestions?

1) yes
2) yes
3) yes

We do have plans in place to change projects pages and suggestions are always appreciated. I can't give any specifics as to what the changes are or when they are coming at this time.

Modifié par Jeff Rousell, 15 janvier 2010 - 03:26 .

[fluffyamoeba]

A bare minimum would be separating out projects with something released from the others. I think the projects need to be by default sorted by released vs not released and only then by other criteria.



Updating the featured projects would be good too - one of them has "discontinued" on its project page. I'm generally for keeping ratings as simple as possible otherwise everything is rated between 8.5923 and 10. However the popularity system is not going to be any use for finding things soon - good new projects will be at the bottom and ancient abandoned projects will be at the top.

[shennessy]

I would love to see 4 states for a project. That would be a big selector at the top of the projects tab.

1. (Released) ready to download and tested with the latest patch

2.. (Beta) either not flagged by the project owner as up to date with the latest patch or not ready to enter the (Released) state

3. (Alpha) downloads that are locked to group members to download and no others

4. (Design) no files, just some idea in somebodies little brain. All projects start here to collect ideas, group members and groupies.



Some rules I would like to see for each project state to help keep things clean.

1. When Bioware releases a new patch ALL projects in the released state are set to beta. Its up to the project group to go in and test to make sure the patch didnt break their project and set it back to released.

2. If a project is in the Design state for more than 30 days a message is sent to the project leader. If they do not respond to the message within 1 week the project is deleted.

3. Once a project has a file to download it is automatically moved to the alpha state. Its up to the project owner to move it to the beta state to allow non project group members to download stuff.

4. Add the ability for a group member to assume project leader status if the project leader has gone away for a long time and does not respond to a message of transfer within 1 week.



Voting system:

Only projects in the released state can be voted on.

Every vote is linked to the registered voter, only one vote per project.

If a registered user is found to only give out negative votes for every project and does not have a valid reason they get their account locked down. No more downloads, no more votes, all votes by that user are removed from all projects.

Votes are on a 1 to 3 scale. 1 means do not like, 2 means workable, 3 means highly recomend.



Sorting for released projects

Sort by highest vote score average

Sort by highest number of votes



Sorting for released/beta

Sort by latest project update

Sort by highest number of downloads

Sort by largest total download size

[fluffyamoeba]

deleting unreleased projects isn't really needed - if no-one can vote on them they're going to be out of the way for most searching purposes.

[Djes]

fluffyamoeba wrote...

A bare minimum would be separating out projects with something released from the others. I think the projects need to be by default sorted by released vs not released and only then by other criteria.

That has definitely been suggested previously, and the odds are good that it's one of the planned changes.

Updating the featured projects would be good too - one of them has "discontinued" on its project page.

If you find something like that, let Chris Priestly or one of the other bioware devs know, and they can clean it up.

[NorseDude]

I don't see what the big deal is. We need to find a Download-section, Project-section or something like that in the menu that takes to a place with all the uploaded projects. We had that in Neverwinter Nights, so why can't we have a similar thing in Dragon Age? Isn't this the spiritual successor to most BioWare games, including Neverwinter Nights?

[fluffyamoeba]

There is one - it's to the right of the link back to the home page and the left of the link to the forums. It's just that it needs to be a lot easier to find what you are looking for on that page.

[Qkrch]

NorseDude wrote...

I don't see what the big deal is. We need to find a Download-section, Project-section or something like that in the menu that takes to a place with all the uploaded projects. We had that in Neverwinter Nights, so why can't we have a similar thing in Dragon Age? Isn't this the spiritual successor to most BioWare games, including Neverwinter Nights?

Cause Bioware never cared about amateur content, it was IGN who developed and admin the Vault site, first pillar of the NWN and NWN2 community.

I'm thinking is too late, sorry. The project tab is never going any way.

[Snoteye]

Qkrch wrote...

Cause Bioware never cared about amateur content...

Actually, you couldn't be further from the truth. That was the whole point of NWN to begin with.

[fluffyamoeba]

They pay for GameSpy. Also Bioware Wednesdays, donating stuff to Neverwinter Connections for the NWNCon, free content for 2 years after the last expansion which could only be used by builders and persistent worlds.



Oh and the DA toolset beta. Plus the toolset wiki is still nearly entirely Bryan Derksen's work 2 months after the game came out.

[Aesir Rising]

Jeff Rousell wrote...
<snip>
We do have plans in place to change projects pages and suggestions are always appreciated. I can't give any specifics as to what the changes are or when they are coming at this time.

Bioware isn't providing the content on Projects, so I can't fathom why all the secret squirrel stuff.  It's a player-to-player feature, as best I can tell.,  What I mean is that unless you seek buy-in for you plans from the people using it, and a testing process that provides for feedback on features as they're developed, it will fail as a project just as easily as if funding were cut or management objectives weren't reached.  Your users are both a stakeholder in this project and the content provider.  Let's bring them in to the planning discussions, maybe.

Assuming you don't do that, I'll list out one thing that bugs me:
It's not a request conduit.  Sorting through pages of

[REQUEST]A Great Idea But I Can't Do It Myself
or
aaaaasdf

Needs to stop

[Sunjammer]

fluffyamoeba wrote...

They pay for GameSpy. Also Bioware Wednesdays, donating stuff to Neverwinter Connections for the NWNCon, free content for 2 years after the last expansion which could only be used by builders and persistent worlds.

There you go again letting the facts get in the way of a perfectly good conspiracy theory.

fluffyamoeba wrote...

Oh and the DA toolset beta. Plus the toolset wiki is still nearly entirely Bryan Derksen's work 2 months after the game came out.

There are currently 1184 content pages in the wiki and I created about 700 of them so we'll have a bit less of that "nearly entirely Bryan Derksen" talk if it's all the same!  Admittedly I did write an application to do the all the hard work but still ... !

[FalloutBoy]

Aesir Rising wrote...

Jeff Rousell wrote...

We do have plans in place to change projects pages and suggestions are always appreciated. I can't give any specifics as to what the changes are or when they are coming at this time.

Bioware isn't providing the content on Projects, so I can't fathom why all the secret squirrel stuff.  It's a player-to-player feature, as best I can tell.,  What I mean is that unless you seek buy-in for you plans from the people using it, and a testing process that provides for feedback on features as they're developed, it will fail as a project just as easily as if funding were cut or management objectives weren't reached.  Your users are both a stakeholder in this project and the content provider.  Let's bring them in to the planning discussions, maybe.

This is dead-on accurate. There is far too much "We know what you need better than you do" attitude going on. But I guess I'll just shut up and keep making free content for their game.

[shennessy]

I know its not what you all want to hear, but patience is probably the best course for us now. Remember the vault had a huge incentive to make good stuff fast because they had lots of advertisments that needed alot of people to visit the site and keep coming back. I am sure Bioware wants this social site to be just as good, but I dont see the financial push that an ad only site would put on its staff to make it happen yesterday or no more jobs today.



I am sure the web devs dont want to tell us what they are planning for fear they wont be able to get it all in. And besides this site only needs a few things to be awesome, its not that far to go.

[Necroscope84]

I just came here to look for some mods and after going through over twenty pages I came here to make this exact same post, I too would love some kind of reform done to the projects page.  I have no idea why they didn't do it like they did with NWN and list different mods by catagories such as: playable mods, custom characters and portraits, buildings - placables, weapons and armor, etc just put different catagories out so that we can find what we're looking for better.  I love this social page and I've tried to get mods at other places but most of them lack what this site has and that's a front page to tell what the mod is, a user rating for the mods, a link for discussion and comments. Those are such nice features and really help me in choosing the mods that are right for me but you've made finding any and all mods a complete and utter nightmarish chore. I'd rather make love to a cheese grater than to look through more pages Lol.  Please do something soon. 

[Necroscope84]

Jeff Rousell wrote...

Challseus wrote...

1) Does Bioware know/care about this issue?
2) If yes to #1, or there plans in place for changes?
3) If yes to #2, do you want suggestions?

1) yes
2) yes
3) yes

We do have plans in place to change projects pages and suggestions are always appreciated. I can't give any specifics as to what the changes are or when they are coming at this time.

Thank you thank you thank you

[Snoteye]

shennessy wrote...

I am sure the web devs dont want to tell us what they are planning for fear they wont be able to get it all in.

This is a fairly common business strategy and one BioWare has used a lot in the past. It's not like we can play a much greater role in the process than making suggestions anyway, and promises that aren't kept will just will make everyone sadface.

[Allan Smith]

A while back, Bryan Derksen went through and parsed through a lot of the issues that had been raised on the forums and boiled it down to a list that we have since posted on the wiki.

social.bioware.com/wiki/datoolset/index.php/Social_site_suggestions

Please feel to jump in on that page and add any other suggestions/comments/constructive criticisms there.  The idea is that we can collect all of this into a central location instead of trolling through forum postings.

Modifié par Allan Smith, 18 janvier 2010 - 10:54 .

[Allan Smith]

As a temporary measure, I have created a sticky where completed, downloadable modules can be posted for now.

social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/75/index/655135/1#655135

[Dark0ne-]

I think a lot of people are quick to forget that BioWare didn't need to release a toolset at all. Through my contact with the various PR staff over at Bethesda I know that they have grown a little tired of spending a lot of time working on releasing a usable SDK for the masses only to have it thrown back in their faces by a vocal minority of the community who wanted feature x, y and z to be compatible with feature a, b and c. Don't let the same happen to BioWare.



Remember that the toolset is a priviledge, not a given/right.



Having said that I also like to argue that if you're going to commit to something then you should do it right. In terms of the social site, for me, it's a matter of the thought being there but the execution being off. There are inherent problems with the site that have been here since day one; the lack of differentiation between completed downloads and WIP projects is probably the largest, followed by a god awful search system. It's now been over 2 months by my recollection and these two very core problems have yet to be addressed; as a webmaster myself I find this quite interesting. Probably because atleast the former doesn't seem like it would be much work to fix.



As a company BioWare have their own way of doing things and it's obvious they like to keep what they're working on relatively close to their chest. Personally I'd rather let people know what I'm doing, and what I plan on doing. It's a way of showing the people who visit my site that even if it takes a long time to get my proposed features/updates/upgrades/fixes out I'm atleast aware of the problem and it's on my to-do list.



I hope BioWare can sort out some of these problems relatively soon so posts like these won't be necessary.