CPC (in General)

So, uh, is it dead?

http://www.carnageblender.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00309n

No

No

You mind giving us some update so we don't worry about the lack of empirical activity?

Actually, all I care about is a new supporter item.

That is on hold temporarily. We have a lot of things on the table though so keep your eyes peeled!

Is it just a hold on the implementation of a new Supporter Item, or was there a winner/s to the Supporter Item contest? Or is the contest on hold?

The CPC has done it's picks and presented them however due to serveral other things on the table previously that could affect the Implementation and balancing of any New Supporter Items it is on hold.

We have not forgotten we are just doing things in liine as necessary.

Any chance we could see the shortlist? ;)

That is not up to me alone GL. Best I can say is that there is great things coming sooner than you think :-)

Consider it a general request to the CPC then. :P

I understand it's not going to tell us the winner, but it would be interesting to see the top 'x' that have been shortlisted as the best ideas from that thread.

And the winner should be chosen from that shortlist, right? ;)

Is this one of those good things come to those who wait things?

I doubt ill be able to obtain the new item what ever it may be for a little while so i can wait!!! ; )

Yes the winner would be picked from the Suggested one's that the CPC Chose, as viable options, to present to Jon/NS.


I will ask and see if that is ok but I will not be able to do this until I get home from work.

I can wait for the surprise as long as I know it's coming. And since I can't harass the CPC, I'll go harass Fex about the chat mail notifier.

It may not be obvious but some of the recent things have come about with the help of the CPC. Like the new forging bonus and the fix for the VB.

Considering that the community is questioning the effectiveness of the CPC, they should really start taking credit for their work.

Alright for the Community to see in what way Demi. All 3 of us have strengths and weaknesses and so contribute whatever it is that we can for everything that is on the table for discussion. Honestly even with the Help and Suggestions we have given in the end it is still NS who makes these Changes actually happen. So to claim credit is kinda rude at least to me. I would feel that if NS wants to give us some credit for what we do then he will until then the CPC will continue to put in whatever work we are given to do.

Nem, I wouldn't really give the credit of the VB to the CPC, Jir brought up the bug and anyone could have tested it. Nov and Zen had nothing to do with it (unless I'm mistaken); and you just happened to be the one testing it.

As for the forging clan bonus? What did you guys do, suggest it to NS for the (let me think here)... 15th time?

That's exactly what part of our job is. To test the bugs, verify them, and help get them fixed. It is indeed true that anyone could have done it. If you wish to help then when someone brings up a bug volunteer to test it and verify then put up your results.

Exactly, just b/c you were on the CPC doesn't mean the CPC had anything to do with it. If there was no CPC the outcome of the VB would have been the same.

I've got no problem giving credit where credit is due. You, Jir and NS deserve the credit, not the CPC.

I am very interested in knowing exactly what the CPC is doing.

Is it bug testing? Because we were doing that before as a community, posting our prelim results in the forums and getting feedback as to if it is is real bug.

Finding new supporter items? We could easily have a post like we did and take votes/poll just like the old days.

Is it testing new potential features?

If the CPC is supposed to be a link between the players and the developers, can the players then get regular feedback from the CPC on how things are going?

Because we as a community through the years have expected and have been "conditioned" to expect changes every 2, then 3 months.

Now that Jon is taking a smaller part in CB, with NS taking a larger part, things are changing. Some for the better some not. But it is becoming NS's game now. And NS has an overall different style than Jon. We are now getting incremental changes.

Which is fine as I am concerned, to keep CB going. But the older players, the backbone of the game are so used to one thing and things are different now.

I would really hope the CPC would be a link as I described. With real answers instead of cryptic ones. I personally feel that more communication after almost a year of no new supporter item, no new spell or skill would help the game immensely.

I say this not to stir up things but as a person who has benefited greatly from playing CB. I would very much like to see the game continue.

There will be an official report posted as soon as it's complete. We're always happy to talk to folks and ask questions, however a more frequent public update is a little bit more than the three of us can handle at the moment. The amount of traffic on the mailing list has certainly increased, and ideas are being implemented.

For example, the path from suggestion to inclusion for the t-score idea (a major change for tournaments, and a nice win for the game in general) was rather quick. This idea originated from within the CPC, and NS acted on it quite rapidly. The developer interaction with the council is quite frequent, and I hope to see more positive actions taken soon.

We are still very open to player comment, and have forwarded many of your ideas along already. Give us time, and encouragement and we might just surprise even the most pessimistic of you.

This is a part of it. Really we just try to streamline the process though.


Again, this is a part. It doesn't mean there won't still be those votes/polls just like the old days.


This is a big part of it. Helping find balance for features as well as helping out with the process.


This is also supposed to be a part. Part of the problem is that it's hard to tell how much we should tell everyone. It is very easy to overstep the bounds a bit and then potentially mess things up badly.


This might indeed be a step over my bounds but there is something "Big" in the works. We are working on it right now. I can't say what exactly it is on, mainly because it keeps on changing its form seemingly every day, but there will be a change that you all will find worthy of the old changemonths.

Nov and Natasha have both hit the nail on the head. We are here and are working closely with NS on several projects. Unfortunately our ability to drop ALL information or in some cases even a snippit can be detrimental to the development of said project.

What's worse is I personally would hate to say "Hey we have this awesome change in the works!" and two days later have to come back and say "Sorry guys false alarm the idea got trashed."

Finding a middle ground is extremely hard to do. Best I can say is like Nov said when we get some time we will be able to generate a Report showing what the CPC has been involved in.

Until then know that we have not forgotten what our duties are and that we take them seriously and are constantly in motion for the community.

I made this point in that other thread. ;)

If that is indeed the case, then the solution is obvious. :P

i think that many in the community saw the player council as a two-way communication interface between the devs and the community. letting us know that one of those streams is working is great but still less than expected.

surely there are some things, not all, that can be shared with the community. with our population doing what it is, getting our hopes up only to disappoint might not be the worst case scenario.

basically, going from having two devs that really don't give much information to having two devs and three community members that do the same, even if they are all working feverishly for us, looks much the same from our end. i do know things are happening due to my interactions with ns on the known issues changes but i am just trying to also give you guys an idea of what it looks like from the other side. ; )

I read this thread in its entirety (which I don't usually do, seeing as how most threads are.) I was surprised at the quality of discourse, and I wish more threads were like this.

Now, regarding your requests, "you" being the vocal people in the thread.

First, please do not criticize anyone for lack of work. That's just plain mean. This is aimed mostly at Titan, but more generally, I don't want to see that kind of thing. Things like the VB fix are very hard to test with just Any Random Player. As it was, I believe that was the bug where I flooded Natasha's CM box with upwards of 8,000 messages (that's accurate, not hyperbole) trying to fix it. If I just needed someone to click "fight", I could do that myself. Or I could log into someone's account who had a setup that needed testing and click "Fight" on his account. The big things that I've been fixing lately have been far more involved in terms of pulling back the many layers of things going on to get at the heart of an issue.

So please don't belittle anyone's contribution.


With that out of the way, the CPC has been very helpful far in a lot of ways. There'd probably be more going on even still if I had more time, but as several of you are starting to find out, my offline life is all sorts of haywire to the point where I don't even know what's going on half the time, and the other half isn't all too pleasant. So, time to sit down and hack on CB is minimal. Heck, there's even a backlog of threads on the CPC mailing list that are waiting on replies from me. So please do not blame them. If there's a bottleneck anywhere, it's with me.

As for what has come out so far, there have been several very involved, important, and far reach bug fixes that went through the phases of identification, implementation, test, and verification VERY quickly. Further, the t_score feature that went in took a lot of time going back and forth over how to do it, what to achieve, etc. It started, actually, as a completely different idea, and wound up the way it is now. There've been other, smaller improvements done as well that come out of direct interaction with people who are around when I have the time.

Regarding the future, I'm doing a lot when I can. A few ideas circled around, and we settled on the one to start with. It then morphed into something completely different, took a few left turns, got on the expressway, and currently is the reason for Little Anthony's thread earlier this month about not being able to fight The Traveling Man (or was that Draco?) It's big, it's impactful, and hopefully it's something that I can stretch out slowly over a long period of time to milk the nuance of it all as much as possible :) :)

Gentle reminder if the answer wasn't a 'no'. ;)

Tis not a no, I have done my bit, but I am only one in a group and have to wait on others to get to their part. Life as you know has been rough for me lately but I am not the only one. I just feel it better to get it out and talk about it when I can it's therapeutic for me. Others though may not think the same way and prefer to keep things to themselves. Overall it has not been forgotten, life is just hammering us all at the moment, so no worries :-)

Me too, me too. ;) /hugs