Improve experiments with players

[bkgmjo]

[Brief summary of idea]:

When you experiment with players, please tell them why, for how long, for which reason and what data the experiments are supposed to show.

[Reasoning behind proposal]:

As everyone should have learned from experiments with the players in pub over the years, this can have drastic effects on the population and happiness of players. Especially when they just get a lie about "this is an experiment" while actually it is mostly just random changes.

"In the scientific method, an experiment is an empirical method that arbitrates between competing models or hypotheses. Experimentation is also used to test existing theories or new hypotheses in order to support them or disprove them." -Wiki

[Best way to implement]:

Whenever you change something experimentally, may it be pub, TWD, chats or whatever open a READ ONLY forum post BEFORE conducting changes, which will have only one answer containing the results. Include detailed information about:

1. The setting of the experiment. (arenas affected, changes in settings, ...)
2. The begin AND end of the experiment.
3. What goals do you try to reach?
4. What data is being collected, how is it structured?
5. If available, votes on the changes.
6. Summary of the outcome of the experiments. NOT your decisions later on, just the outcome of the experiments. This way the experiments section will be kept clean from ranting and easy to recheck.

[Detailed summary of idea]:

Without structure those so-called experiments result in usually all or most of the following points:

• shit storm
• players leaving
• players cheating due to frustration
• staffers leaving due to frustration
• dev leaving due to frustration
• trust in staff heavily damaged
• community-driven-game looking like one-person-playground
• the initiator of the changes leaving in shame leaving a chaos
• original settings getting lost
• the changes being just a repeat of some "experiment" made before, which nobody knew things about because it was not documented
• return to the original settings or a portion of it with a heavy permanent loss in population

There are only very few changes which were lucky instantly and made it into being liked by most. Do not assume every single "good idea" you have to be lucky like this and consider making the proposed form mandatory please.

[KrynetiX]

I'll take this into consideration. You have to remember that everyone (staff, developers) is managing their time, prioritizing, helping where/when we can and doing the best we can. There's a lot of things I'd *like* to do, but simply don't have time for. I understand your concerns and I'll try my best to document each change, the reason behind it, and correlate each change with a forum topic for players to discuss the change. Thanks for being dedicated enough to post this. If you've got any ideas for structure or anything in general, talk to me. If you have any free time to help out we're always looking for more manpower.

[bkgmjo]

Yes I know how troubling this is. After all I have experience in professional game development where it is a constant war between managers wanting lists and reports and coders/designers hating them for it. The outcome, which is somewhere in the middle, is mostly useful though since problems can be traced down and improvements can be suggested based on those documentations. I also know nobody here gets paid for doing anything and it is all a donation to a game they learned to love. But then again there is so much rumoring and talking about staff decisions that I think it should work to just redirect some of this to a common list. Not full documentation but a basic summary like suggested. Would also help not to lose the goal of things out of scope (Example: lev changes are supposed to increase population on the game, yet they keep turning into personal wars over what single people think is right).

I'll keep using my manpower secretly for this game as you and quite a few others should know, but I'll not let someone talk me into getting on staff again just to find out I have to wait for months to find out I won't be allowed to fix the plain bugs I came on staff for.

[KrynetiX]

I'll keep using my manpower secretly for this game as you and quite a few others should know, but I'll not let someone talk me into getting on staff again just to find out I have to wait for months to find out I won't be allowed to fix the plain bugs I came on staff for.

A lot has changed. It's my job to make sure developers never have to deal with any politics or 'higher-ups' reversing a project that was already given the OK. I've seen it happen too many times and dishearten many good developers.

I make sure anyone who is willing+capable+mature has the access, resources and clearance they need. Executive decisions no longer effect TWDev as they once did. Restructure of staff, redistribution of zh/er/mod/smod/sysop, changes in department management and so on do not effect TWDev.

There's been a clear and definitive line drawn between developers and the rest of staff, as it should be.

I know it's hard to convince you that 'staff' has changed their ways (I refrained from joining TW most of my SS career, even though it was my favorite 'home' zone), but if you check out the attitude among the active developers I believe you'll be surprised.

No more politics, period.

[Bukkake Surprise]

Then why does the game still suck?