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Star Wars Galaxies - The Galactic Senate

July 11th, 2007 (Visited 2767 times) Tags:

So SWG is taking a small step towards player government. This is nice to see, though I note that even though players can nominate, they can’t vote on the Senators. Instead, Senators are picked by the community team.

One of the powers of a Senator is to vote on legislation. There’s nothing in there about what exactly Senate legislation is or what it can accomplish, though. But they do get some forum mod powers, the ability to sticky posts, and stuff like that. It isn’t a hollow title, basically, though it’s also not true power.

Long ago, I floated the idea of actually let.ting players vote in Correspondents. Kinda neat to see the meme still around (though who knows to what degree this was inspired by that…)

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RLMMO :: View topic - The Galatic Senate Upgrade wrote on July 12th, 2007 at 6:25 am:

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Reader Comments

David (Talaen) said on July 11th, 2007 at 9:51 pm:
I think honestly it’s mostly another attempt at the original correspondant program, which (from my perspective as a player) was really helpful when the dev team used it properly. Basically, a way to close the feedback loop between players and devs, just this time cast in a more roleplay-friendly way. Still, it’s good to see.
Peder Burgaard said on July 11th, 2007 at 10:31 pm:
How about vote in developers? So the team working on future expansions/features are selected by the community. I don’t know if this would work in reality, and what level of game design should be on vote - just content or revamp’s of the entire game mechanics.

The question is if anyone with radical new ideas would ever be voted in e.g. CU & NGE. But, on the positive side thier election campaign could enlighten the player community as to why the revamps are necessary, and give the feeling to the community that they had a say.
Please said on July 12th, 2007 at 3:23 am:
Or, see A Tale in the Desert for real community involvement, without the ‘no reversion to pre-nge’ clause in the job description.
Over00 said on July 12th, 2007 at 5:53 am:
I’m having a hard time trying to figure how this “system” is any different from the previous correspondents system, beside players being able to nominate which was somewhat done unofficially before.

Looks more to me like a social game in the game than anything else with “real” powers.
Darniaq said on July 12th, 2007 at 6:25 am:
Oiy. How long before this becomes a 100+ Comment epic?

On the original topic, everything old is new again. In a good way. But it does provide insights into the effectiveness of the NGE in expanding the playerbase by attracting a different style of player from a larger pool.

To give the players what they want is to understand the players you have. And SWG seems to have largely retained the same types of players that have been with them since launch, even if they’re different people. These are more deeply invested players than come to your typical DIKU, so for the same reason the Correspondent program was started, it makes perfect sense to repackage that as a Senate.

Which by extension provides insights into the reasons behind the last ten months of development activities.
Joseph said on July 12th, 2007 at 8:00 am:
The won’t listen to the obvious, so why should anyone believe that they will listen to this new “senate”?
DaveN said on July 12th, 2007 at 8:03 am:
I find it amusing that they specifically proscribe calls to roll back the NGE. I realize that such a thing is likely impossible this point due to developer attrition, but it is still funny.
Cameron Sorden said on July 12th, 2007 at 8:56 am:
Don’t assume that because they get to vote they get to do anything. Example: We’ve had a student government for all of the five years I’ve been at my college and I have yet to see them do anything of significance for the student body.

I’ll believe they’re listening when I see it in action.
Mnemon said on July 12th, 2007 at 9:39 am:
IMO just another in a long line of “hey we really care what the community thinks” SOE puppet shows, usually followed by periods of SOE completely ignoring the community’s thoughts and falling back to their old ways, before reinstating the show.

This puppet show is actually my second favorite - standing along side its cousin, the “we really need to do a better job communicating - and by god we’re going to start right now!” show.

Both are conveniently emphasized by SOE when they feel its in their best interest to emphasis them, only to later be neglected and all plans scrapped. Until its time for them to emphasize it again. The classic “one step forward, two steps back” game.
Mnemon said on July 12th, 2007 at 9:40 am:
btw looks like Raph’s got some ads. Very nice.

Think at some point you could redesign this place There are literally thousands of WordPress skins you could use if designing isn’t your bad. Hell i’d even volunteer to whip you something up that is easier on the eyes.
Trucegore said on July 12th, 2007 at 9:50 am:
They had this before, and they lied to them with “It will all be addressed in the Combat re balance”,and let them play the version of the CU that was not going live (Replaced by the NGE).

I don’t have any faith in it.
Tarek said on July 12th, 2007 at 10:53 am:
I’m not sure what purpose this serves, exactly. Maybe the developers thought they weren’t getting enough focused feedback from the 11 highly dedicated player volunteers they already have?

It can be difficult to keep track of issues on the SWG boards, so I can understand the development team wanting profession-based, focused feedback.

What I don’t like about the system is the inevitable grand-standing for the ‘public’ that will occur, along with the inevitable “I disagree with my Senator so I wanna impeach him ’cause he asked for something I don’t like” threads.

I remember the correspondant system, and I remember the way some correspondants were practically at war with each other when the interests of their professions conflicted.

The other thing I don’t like is the concept of a limited term on these ‘new’ senators. This isn’t a democracy, so longevity on the boards and in the game is important; the longer a person has been playing, the more aware they are of the actual issues in the game as opposed to the ‘transient’ issues that come up because of popular sentiment.

Previously, it felt like the ’six month’ term for correspondants was just a way for the developers to throw out player representatives whose feedback they didn’t like.
Starnick said on July 12th, 2007 at 11:17 am:
Tarek - yeah the 11 senators were starting to grow stretched. If anyone remembers me I was the last commando correspondent/senator up till last September when I resigned from the program (after 4 years, my interest in SWG has been waning im afraid). Due to a lot of correspondents not staying on we were somewhat a small group to begin with and Thunderheart wasn’t getting a lot of new blood in - by the time I left, several others followed and now we had folks who were covering areas of the game that they previously weren’t active on.

In fact, thats why I actually think getting back to profession-based representatives is a good thing. Before the senate program I was primarily focused on the commando profession but also brought up other issues (for a time subbed in for a MIA weaponsmith correspondent), and I did that also as a senator. What really changed? We became less, lost mod powers, no longer had 6 month term limits (we did have term limits where applications were accepted again and we could toss in our hat, but that was abandoned during the CU), and became effectively “less focused” since now we weren’t bound to anyone but ourselves (officially).
Mnemon said on July 12th, 2007 at 12:17 pm:
Previously, it felt like the ’six month’ term for correspondants was just a way for the developers to throw out player representatives whose feedback they didn’t like.

Bingo. This lets SOE get rid of those who rock the boat and answer any questions about it with a simple “oh well their term was up.”

IMO the profession route was always the wrong way to go anyway. As was pointed out, say the Bounty Hunter rep. was going to have a very different idea of what needed to be done compared to a Jedi rep. Not to mention the reps were dealing with a majority of folks they had no in-game interaction with.

Having representation from each server would have been a better way to go.
Darniaq said on July 12th, 2007 at 1:27 pm:
I actually think the Profession correspondent was the right way to go. This is because while they are not professional systems designers like the SWG team, they are (theoretically) the most experienced player of how the profession plays. It’s one thing to work on the matrix of interactions between various skills, weapons and armor between players. It’s another altogether to understand what it feels like.

The Senate is there for the “feel”, but that is merely one data point for the team to consider.
Anony Mouse said on July 12th, 2007 at 10:08 pm:
At this point there’s no reason not to turn over large heaps of the decision making process to the playerbase, and “for real”, with nothing off the table.

If it’s successful, then maybe likewise for PlanetSide, MXO, and possibly even EQ1.

It’s not like any of the current players would quit over such a policy-change (nor apparently for anything ever), it would further demonstrate a commitment to the players (which they really seem to have now, but also with an inability to prove it). The positive buzz would be worth a mint…

Who knows? They might even pick up a few subs in the short-term (if they could convince folk they were serious) no matter what happens thereafter.

Even if it all heads south… (well, first, just how far south could it go, anyway?), the lessons they could learn from it would be invaluable.

This seems very timid, considering the stakes.

I wonder if the original proposal wasn’t more bold, and this is what remains after being sifted through fear and ego.
David Irelan said on July 13th, 2007 at 8:59 pm:
For my part, I’m not yet able to take anything pertaining to a so-called “Galactic Senate” or any other form of player representive program SOE might cook up seriously, or even to drum up the gumption to pay any attention to it as an advisory board. Not with the resignation/firing/whatever of people like Tiggs, and probably JFreeman, whose essay on The Man was one of the most entertaining reads I remember seeing from a dev. It will be a long time before I take SWG’s public-relations efforts seriously, if ever. Not with the Clintonesque stonewalling over the NGE, and the endless “It’s Starwarsy! It’s ICONIC!” bleats in the face of massive expressions of outrage from the player base.

As far as I am concerned, I am measuring SWG by ONE criterion: Whether the game brushes with greatness again. If so, then I will play again. If not, then I won’t. And yes, I will probably continue to pop in for a week or two, or a month or two from time to time, just to see how the game is working. Heck, I’m in the middle of a two-week free vet trial to see how the Beast Mastery system and the tougher mobs are working right at this moment. My current opinion: The improvements have increased the quality of the in-game experience, but I still wish someone would knock some sense into the devs about the way the level-based system has all but wiped out the gameplay value of the ten original worlds. But hey, WoW has levels, and levels have been the mainstay of RPGs since Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson created Dungeons & Dragons in their garage, so why would the SWG devs suddenly listen to me now?

But, then again, maybe they are listening to me. Or at least, me and a few thousand other like-minded game enthusiasts. Still, I did, after all, toss out a post one day about how cool it might be to choose one of the static cities for a major in-game event built around a Disaster of Questionable Origin that leveled the city, and turned it into a PvP zone. And I did suggest that Restuss would be a perfect candidate for the event. And that it would be a great gambit to generate buzz when the devs thought the game was ripe for a major splash. And lo and behold, a few months later, the Battle of Restuss took place. And a new Expertise line that allows players to create something at least somewhat resembling Creature Handler has made its debut. It’s nice for the Bioengineer types, but it still lacks some of the nature-boy charm of going out into the wild and taming cute little baby Merek Assassins and stuff, but it’s still nice to see. Nice to see it assume apparent high-priority status too, after the jailhouse-soap job given to the original Creature Handlers. And now, doggone it, they’ve gone and added meaningful Damage-Over-Time effects to some of the creatures on Dathomir, and made krayt dragons tough again, and reintroduced high-strength buffs — again (and yes, one of my last rants before leaving again back in January ‘07 was one in which I reminisced about how the old pre-CU Doc buffs gave an interesting feel to characters, allowing us to feel like superhumans for a couple of hours) — and gosh knows what else. Only so much I can do after a hard day in cell-phone customer support.

Still, I consider the Galactic Senate program a mere Punch ‘n’ Judy show, an utter irrelevance beyond the functions of selling new game features to the SWG forum community, and giving the player base the tools to let us explain to one another how said new features actually work. If I burn a game card for a month or two of game/forum access, I will voice my opinions directly, and hope they make a difference.

David (”Iakimo”) Irelan
David (Talaen) said on July 14th, 2007 at 4:28 am:
Iakimo - you might find this thread interesting:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m?topic_id=399111

If the success of a game is measured by subscription numbers, then it would seem that after a year of making up for the fiasco parts of the NGE, the game is starting to enjoy more success.

I got nominated by a friend to be one of the senators. I don’t know that I’ll get the seat, but since I’m sort of personally invested in it now, I thought I would offer my opinion of the program.

Basically, I think that the Senate, or the Correspondant system that it is a rehash of, is/was an amazing tool, and properly used, would be an enormous asset to ongoing development of the game.

The key there is properly used. The correspondants/senators are going to do what they’re supposed to for the most part. They’re going to bring issues to the dev team, make proposals on behalf of the player community, and be available to be a sounding board for ideas from the other side.

The catch is that the development team, from the producers on down to individual designers, need to leverage this tool. There needs to be a level of engagement.

Currently SWG has a brand-new community manager (who came from outside SOE if I read his intro right), a relatively new producer, and a new (but experienced) lead designer. These three roles are critical in the effectiveness of the Senate program. As long as Greypawn, Deadmeat, and Blixtev continue to really listen to and engage with the playerbase through the senate (and directly sometimes too) then it will be an asset.

As soon as that stops, for whatever reason, then the game will probably be back on a wrong path again. For now though, they’re doing a great job, and because of that the player community seems willing to give these guys a chance and see what happens. So far, they haven’t disappointed.
Kylrathin said on July 14th, 2007 at 9:10 am:
The Galactic Senate was instituted at the same time the Correspondent program was phased out - with the intro of the NGE. Anyone else remember this? The Senate had as much power then as the Senate did in Episode III. It just smacked of irony to me then, and it does now as well. SOE has proven they cannot be trusted so many times… We can adopt a wait-and-see attitude, but I think in time it will become obvious that it’s not going to be anywhere near what they make it sound like. The fact that they set the boundaries they did reveals so much about the inner workings of their organization.
lassiter said on July 14th, 2007 at 6:04 pm:
Round one, correspondents, it will make it easier or the dev’s to find out what the players want. correspondents werent listened to.
Round two, senators, it will make it easier for dev’s to find out what the players want, senators werent listened to.
Round three, senators part II, who cares they wont listen anyway.Its just away to distract the remaining players.
David Irelan said on July 14th, 2007 at 8:38 pm:
Talaen, it is interesting that SWG has moved into the top 16 in boxed-game sales. I’m not quite sure what to make of the sales figures, though. SWG has always been a fairly strong seller. I remember seeing a story about the game reaching the one-million-games-sold mark a while back. Summer 2006, if memory serves. Sony Online has made it a point to make sure we heard about that figure, too. But, since this is a subscription game, the figure we wonder about — and the stat that SOE refuses to divulge — is the game’s retention rate. The stories about the million-unit benchmark just seemed ludicrous when juxtaposed against the subscriber defections at the time.
Darniaq said on July 15th, 2007 at 3:31 am:
The point of GreyPawn’s post was likely more as a way to make the community feel good about the game they already like than to attract any attention from the outside. There’s just too little actual information in there to have any sort of external discussion about any sort of “turn around” SWG has experienced.

At this date, it doesn’t matter. Their (team size, discussed content, community mgt tools, etc) strategy seems focused on retention, quality for their current base rather than hoping again for some massive influx of new ones. Which is good for the players.

And the Senate could be useful, as the last two iterations were, if supported with properly managed expectations to the community and the Senators. Ultimately, the Devs are the Emperor, because they are the ones responsible for actually building it and the ones paid to do so.

I’ll worry about the lack of authority of a SWG Senate only if they start getting paid and report directly into SOE management
TearForger said on July 16th, 2007 at 8:22 am:
This seems very similar to what ThunderHeart advocated and then didn’t get any support on… More of the same old same old, nothing new to see here.

TearForger
BadMisterFrosty said on July 19th, 2007 at 3:30 pm:
Late.

The new senate is once again lopsided towards professions, whereas SWG needs true content. There is also a strong group which supports non-combat activities across the board. In one of their first debates, the senate discusses the dissection of the remaining GCW by adding more factions to the game which would have their set of pvp rules and rewards (tapping the last vein which keeps the puny GCW alive, pvp)… as usual
David (Talaen) said on July 20th, 2007 at 4:01 am:
Well, you should never accuse anyone of being able to see the big picture, right Frosty?

I’ve got to admit, I haven’t been too thrilled at what some of the senators are doing, but unfortunately, that’s the way representation in an MMORPG will work. Hopefully there are going to be enough differing viewpoints there that they will all collectively check each other and what ultimately comes out of it will be a compromise that truly is better for the game. All of this is assuming that the dev team pays attention, however.

The one thing I see senators doing that really bothers me is trying to dictate game design to the dev team. The senate forum is full of proposed mechanics and systems. Now, I understand that players who are active on forums tend to be armchair devs - I’m one myself. But at the same time, I think if you’ve been chosen to represent a part of the in-game community, you should be focusing on goals and issues, not on proposals and designs. Then again, that’s a big picture sort of thing I guess.

In other words, while I would expect a player to say: “I want a system that does X, and here is an example of such a system that I have created for you”, I would expect a senator to say “My community would really like systems that do X, Y, and Z. We don’t have one for X right now, and the systems for Y and Z fall through in the following ways….”

I guess we’ll see what happens. Yay for term limits, if nothing else.
Alex Clarke said on July 30th, 2007 at 1:38 pm:
Who is making the decisions when it comes to SOE’s relationships - both tactical and strategic - with its customer base? Are there names that can be named - without broaching any NDAs, I mean? SOE is very secretive about almost everything involving its games, unnecessarily so, I would say. Other MMORPG companies - I am thinking of Blizzard - seem to have a more proactive customer communications policy and one that just seems, how can I put this, just ‘friendlier’.