What do you think about Factional Forums

This is a private opinion poll to check your feelings towards the private factional forums.

 

Where's the poll?

 

Posted now DF... By factional forums, are you referring to cfc.croxis.net or the idea of having a new factional subforum?

 

The same place polls usually are where people ask this question... being typed at that moment.

 

Existing ones, new ones -- the idea of having private ones at all...

 

They are nothing but an extension of chat and private mail, and is within the concept of freedom of speech. Even if someone tried to ban them for their own preference, I would still keep some private forum to consult someone that I trusted with something.

 

I don't see the use of this poll. If a faction has a private forum, and this poll decides that's a bad idea, i don't think the faction will close their private forum.

Anyhow, i voted for good idea since Warlords has one, and i'd be a hypocrite otherwise.
Also, i find it somewhat awkward that moderators are in a faction as well. I think moderators can't be 100% impartial this way. [Not meant to any mod in person ofcourse, i think DS does an amazing job at being impartial as far as i know, but the idea remains awkward for me]

 

I think I understand the use and intention of this poll, and I think it should be discussed in the private forums LOL

 

Strictly as a player:

I find it extremely disconcerting that huge portions of the game strategy are discussed only in private forums, and that decisions are being made outside the public eye. As a player I think this is completely unacceptable. I'm not sure if I even want to continue to be involved, to be honest, because we go days without any significant content on whole areas of the game.

Sure, we had some sparring on city locations and a little bit of content on research, but where is the discussion on production, worker actions, and other in-game items? Participation must be open to everyone, and that means seeing who makes the decisions and why.

The only things that should be private are meta game things like coalitions. If it's about role play or the game then it must be public.

Reminder, the above is as a player...

Not sure what my final position as a mod is yet, but will state that the three of us, and Eyrei before me, were very strongly against political parties in the past for similar reasons that I'm personally against using private forums for game stuff now.

 

Dave, I agree with you. I can state with confidence that the Protectors faction has used public discussion for anything outside of coalition/political positioning discussion. You can see in the Protectors thread that while considering city locations we did show our potential sites and held discussion there. Unfortunately, I don't see what you can do as a mod about people holding private conversations.

To go along with this, I'm dissapointed at the level of participation in the RP threads dedicated to city placement and research. We have tons of opinions in the gameplay threads, which is all well and good, but to be honest, a good RP argument might sway opinion better than an optimum gameplay argument.

 

Both Legion, Faith and Warlords post more here than most players. I see 3-4 Tribal player posting. I can say for Warlords forum, we haven't really posted in a while, mostly using PMs for the last 3 weeks. For example, the preferred Warlord City site was one of the proposed sites by DS, so we are not all deaf ears to outside advise.

I also think private forums came out of a need to preserve the integrity of a thread and the consistent development of an idea without having personal attacks ruining a viable plan, as we saw in the prequel to this game. All Warlords Faction members can testify on the benefit our forum had, in excluding some noise and bias that would have reduced our space significantly. This is a given, and we will not budge on that. Also, we frequently post in this forum, and even if we did not have private forums, we would revert to chat and pms, simply to stay alive, as this main forum has a certain dynamic more preferable to some, if this is the only place to communicate, to put it very diplomatically.

I feel this game is much more civic than before, which is a peace of mind. I have lost all city proposals I have made so far, and all tech recommendations have fallen to dead ears, or surprised me by positive random surprises. My city build proposals have also not been adopted, and I am not complaining, but arguing my views still.

 

I should clarify, I don't have visibility to other faction's forums or private conversations. I'm basing my perception of the relative weight of those mediums on comments like "see the vote being carried out in our private forum", or "the xxx faction will be making the final decision privately". And it seems that there are only about 8-10 people who are actually participating, making me wonder what goes on behind the scenes.

When there are public discussions within the faction (maybe in the faction's public thread for example), and the faction wants to maintain a good image of openness, then let us know where to look. I honestly don't have time to read it all.

What could be done? Of course it's impossible to regulate communication. We could add a rule that requires the decision (by whatever means) to be made in public, ahead of the time the in-game action is taken. And we could ask people to play the game openly.

 

Well, this IS Despotism, Barbarism, Tribalism, Decentralization and Paganism, very much indeed. This is how this world looks and works. Triad truly represents all these civics, so it feels appropriate for the time period. Openness was not the order of the day, but still, this game is quite open. The game is actually quite dynamic, I would say.

My lengthy, yet viable proposal for the Dye City, you merely disgraced by stating "I was in love with the dyes", then I see several Triad members citing you afterwards with the very same argument ("Provo is in love with his dyes"). Such a suggestion would be given more attention and courtesy in a private forum than in here, where metagame politics and old animosities is the order of the day. If someone else proposed to develop 5 dyes and 1 silk within a short period of time, I guess they would be labeled as brilliant, interesting, fair or whatever. Anyways, the Dye-line lost, and you seem happy about it, 25 gold per turn for a city out of the window for now. The Paradise Hills city is not that bad either, but too far away to help the war effort, where Dye City would have given us a direct highway to the war, significantly helping both healing, reinforcements and logistics, as well as gold.

Well, utilizing 6 Calendar based luxuries 2-4 tiles away from the capital was labeled as naive and silly, without a real counter-argument in detail. If that is the kind of lazy rejection my long proposals will get in here, I rather influence by other means, where someone at least give me the courtesy to weigh my arguments and even support them.

That said, all city location proposals I made, lost, so did my technology proposals. I happened to have full control over our scouting warrior and scout, and that worked out fine. I honestly think you exaggerate the Warlords influence a lot, where both your city proposals outside Arete has now become reality (almost).

 

Don't like 'em for various reasons, all of which have been stated by others.

I prefer a more open game. What we've seen thus far is not open, with people being told that their opinion doesn't matter. Quite frankly, that viewpoint is reprehensible.

-- Ravensfire

 

Well, I am allegedly a part of the ruling coalition, and I was told my opinion does not matter, and I was told very briefly that since "I was in love with my dyes", my proposal should be ignored, so no crocodile tears please. My opinion did not matter in a number of areas, but I accept it, since our system currently works.

 

We each pointed out the positives of our preferred position and the negatives of the other. But that is not the purpose of this thread and poll. This thread and poll are about whether we want openness in decision making, or secrecy.

 

I have stated from the start that I am not a proponent of closed forums. It damages community building. What I proposed was to have factional forums off site for the sake of organization so TF wouldn't be bothered making a new forum for every faction who wanted one. As I have also said, if people feel very strongly about having private forums or whatnot they can host their own game on their own site.

 

Provo, this is not the place to discuss city placement issues, so don't bring that in here. You know that. We all stated our reasons for the sites we liked, and the decision is all but made.

 

We got the other opinion, we saw faction forums helped building our community. However, if you need to pluck apart every poster that posts to make a point, yes, you may need to have everything in one main forum, but then you get other bad things with it.

Whenever someone feels insecure about posting something in this environment, they can test the idea elsewhere, without being attacked for making too short, too long or too creative posts. I see a tendency among those that wants private forums to go, to police players into their style of posting, which I feel is quite suffocating.

 

I was reacting to his line of argumentation, not the location per se here. The decision is of course made, and it has its advantages. I just want his argument to be consistent, that's all.