Public developement backlog

steinarmspreeb18_ESO

I was just wondering since there is a lot of debate about what is getting fixed and community is complaining that they need to wait for weeks until their skills behave like they should or broken quests and latency issues etc etc

How about publishing your active development backlog along with enhancements and allow the community to vote on your prioritization ? After all they are the real business owner since you are out of business if they give up.

Simply, all active accounts can vote each month or what ever makes the most sense, and have a visibility on their status open/in progress/in test/etc...

I think you will earn some respect by working closer with the community

What do you think?

Doctoruniverse

Sounds like a good idea.

But it wont happen.

Sorry....

ers101284b14_ESO

So people can take polls on what to complain about? Also some of the fixes aren't getting fixed as fast not because they aren't a priority but because it just takes longer to fix them.

Bloodfang

steinarmspreeb18_ESO wrote: »

I was just wondering since there is a lot of debate about what is getting fixed and community is complaining that they need to wait for weeks until their skills behave like they should or broken quests and latency issues etc etc

How about publishing your active development backlog along with enhancements and allow the community to vote on your prioritization ? After all they are the real business owner since you are out of business if they give up.

Simply, all active accounts can vote each month or what ever makes the most sense, and have a visibility on their status open/in progress/in test/etc...

I think you will earn some respect by working closer with the community

What do you think?

It's a good idea in theory but..let's say they vote to fix "Class Balance". Many don't realise you can't fix such a thing in a day or a week...
People don't have a clue how to fix it, what to change etc. It's like this with many things in programming development. It's much harder than all the players realise, they don't appreciate anything at all.

Lalai

In theory this sounds good (as in, it's a nice idea to think you'd have some control over stuff), but in practice I'd never ever want it.

I would wager a very, very small percentage of players have any programming, or project management experience. They may know what they'd prefer fixed first, but they don't have any idea how long it will take to get said thing fixed, how many people at the office are capable of working on said thing (are familiar with that specific bit of code), or how the systems work together on the back end of things. Maybe people really want thing A fixed.. but thing A depends upon thing B, which players don't really care about, or we don't hear about because it's not directly shown to players.

Basically, gamers just don't know enough about the actual business to be able to make an educated decision about what should be fixed first given all available factors.

ers101284b14_ESO

Lalai wrote: »

In theory this sounds good (as in, it's a nice idea to think you'd have some control over stuff), but in practice I'd never ever want it.

I would wager a very, very small percentage of players have any programming, or project management experience. They may know what they'd prefer fixed first, but they don't have any idea how long it will take to get said thing fixed, how many people at the office are capable of working on said thing (are familiar with that specific bit of code), or how the systems work together on the back end of things. Maybe people really want thing A fixed.. but thing A depends upon thing B, which players don't really care about, or we don't hear about because it's not directly shown to players.

Basically, gamers just don't know enough about the actual business to be able to make an educated decision about what should be fixed first given all available factors.

Really? Cause according to the people on Facebook and the forums it's super simple and would only take 10 minutes to fix. They would know since their GEDs are the pride of their trailer park.

Lalai

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

Lalai wrote: »

In theory this sounds good (as in, it's a nice idea to think you'd have some control over stuff), but in practice I'd never ever want it.

I would wager a very, very small percentage of players have any programming, or project management experience. They may know what they'd prefer fixed first, but they don't have any idea how long it will take to get said thing fixed, how many people at the office are capable of working on said thing (are familiar with that specific bit of code), or how the systems work together on the back end of things. Maybe people really want thing A fixed.. but thing A depends upon thing B, which players don't really care about, or we don't hear about because it's not directly shown to players.

Basically, gamers just don't know enough about the actual business to be able to make an educated decision about what should be fixed first given all available factors.

Really? Cause according to the people on Facebook and the forums it's super simple and would only take 10 minutes to fix. They would know since their GEDs are the pride of their trailer park.

Haha. I have to admit.. I use to kinda be one of those "well gee, how long could that actually take.. it's a simple change!" types.. and then I started dating a programmer. It is simply amazing how much work goes into things; how even in the same programming language, two different people coding one thing can do it completely different ways... to the extent that only the original coder only really knows what's going on. Yeah, there are some basic guidelines to follow with any big project.. but a lot of time if the original coder leaves, whoever replaces them has to spend a good deal of time just looking at how the first guy did it to even get a handle on how to begin to fix it. Much respect for developers in general now... which has earned me the title of "fanboy" on many a forum.

ers101284b14_ESO

Lalai wrote: »

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

Lalai wrote: »

In theory this sounds good (as in, it's a nice idea to think you'd have some control over stuff), but in practice I'd never ever want it.

I would wager a very, very small percentage of players have any programming, or project management experience. They may know what they'd prefer fixed first, but they don't have any idea how long it will take to get said thing fixed, how many people at the office are capable of working on said thing (are familiar with that specific bit of code), or how the systems work together on the back end of things. Maybe people really want thing A fixed.. but thing A depends upon thing B, which players don't really care about, or we don't hear about because it's not directly shown to players.

Basically, gamers just don't know enough about the actual business to be able to make an educated decision about what should be fixed first given all available factors.

Really? Cause according to the people on Facebook and the forums it's super simple and would only take 10 minutes to fix. They would know since their GEDs are the pride of their trailer park.

Haha. I have to admit.. I use to kinda be one of those "well gee, how long could that actually take.. it's a simple change!" types.. and then I started dating a programmer. It is simply amazing how much work goes into things; how even in the same programming language, two different people coding one thing can do it completely different ways... to the extent that only the original coder only really knows what's going on. Yeah, there are some basic guidelines to follow with any big project.. but a lot of time if the original coder leaves, whoever replaces them has to spend a good deal of time just looking at how the first guy did it to even get a handle on how to begin to fix it. Much respect for developers in general now... which has earned me the title of "fanboy" on many a forum.

Oh I know. I did some basic programming for college and man I still don't get it. And seriously to code this game would probably be around 10,000 single spaced pages of a book. And something on line 68985547 could be screwing up something on line 367. Not to mention you put a wrong , somewhere and everything goes to hell. Good luck finding the missing ,

trucqulent

sounds like a terrible idea.

Sure, let the community provide feedback on their development and production workflow... sounds legit. >.>

steinarmspreeb18_ESO

It wouldn't be a problem to have at least an high level estimate on each item in the backlog. So if it's something like S/M/L and maybe XL .. and for each development iteration you can fit 3x S vs 1x M or something along those lines. I of course have no idea about their capacity.

steinarmspreeb18_ESO

Despair9 wrote: »

steinarmspreeb18_ESO wrote: »

I was just wondering since there is a lot of debate about what is getting fixed and community is complaining that they need to wait for weeks until their skills behave like they should or broken quests and latency issues etc etc

How about publishing your active development backlog along with enhancements and allow the community to vote on your prioritization ? After all they are the real business owner since you are out of business if they give up.

Simply, all active accounts can vote each month or what ever makes the most sense, and have a visibility on their status open/in progress/in test/etc...

I think you will earn some respect by working closer with the community

What do you think?

It's a good idea in theory but..let's say they vote to fix "Class Balance". Many don't realise you can't fix such a thing in a day or a week...
People don't have a clue how to fix it, what to change etc. It's like this with many things in programming development. It's much harder than all the players realise, they don't appreciate anything at all.

In my opinion class balance is a luxury problem at the moment, but we can't figure out the imbalance since not all skills are working as designed.

steinarmspreeb18_ESO

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

Lalai wrote: »

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

Lalai wrote: »

In theory this sounds good (as in, it's a nice idea to think you'd have some control over stuff), but in practice I'd never ever want it.

I would wager a very, very small percentage of players have any programming, or project management experience. They may know what they'd prefer fixed first, but they don't have any idea how long it will take to get said thing fixed, how many people at the office are capable of working on said thing (are familiar with that specific bit of code), or how the systems work together on the back end of things. Maybe people really want thing A fixed.. but thing A depends upon thing B, which players don't really care about, or we don't hear about because it's not directly shown to players.

Basically, gamers just don't know enough about the actual business to be able to make an educated decision about what should be fixed first given all available factors.

Really? Cause according to the people on Facebook and the forums it's super simple and would only take 10 minutes to fix. They would know since their GEDs are the pride of their trailer park.

Haha. I have to admit.. I use to kinda be one of those "well gee, how long could that actually take.. it's a simple change!" types.. and then I started dating a programmer. It is simply amazing how much work goes into things; how even in the same programming language, two different people coding one thing can do it completely different ways... to the extent that only the original coder only really knows what's going on. Yeah, there are some basic guidelines to follow with any big project.. but a lot of time if the original coder leaves, whoever replaces them has to spend a good deal of time just looking at how the first guy did it to even get a handle on how to begin to fix it. Much respect for developers in general now... which has earned me the title of "fanboy" on many a forum.

Oh I know. I did some basic programming for college and man I still don't get it. And seriously to code this game would probably be around 10,000 single spaced pages of a book. And something on line 68985547 could be screwing up something on line 367. Not to mention you put a wrong , somewhere and everything goes to hell. Good luck finding the missing ,

I'm pretty sure they have developers with more training than your basic programming course .. or I at least hope so

Maverick827

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

Lalai wrote: »

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

Lalai wrote: »

In theory this sounds good (as in, it's a nice idea to think you'd have some control over stuff), but in practice I'd never ever want it.

I would wager a very, very small percentage of players have any programming, or project management experience. They may know what they'd prefer fixed first, but they don't have any idea how long it will take to get said thing fixed, how many people at the office are capable of working on said thing (are familiar with that specific bit of code), or how the systems work together on the back end of things. Maybe people really want thing A fixed.. but thing A depends upon thing B, which players don't really care about, or we don't hear about because it's not directly shown to players.

Basically, gamers just don't know enough about the actual business to be able to make an educated decision about what should be fixed first given all available factors.

Really? Cause according to the people on Facebook and the forums it's super simple and would only take 10 minutes to fix. They would know since their GEDs are the pride of their trailer park.

Haha. I have to admit.. I use to kinda be one of those "well gee, how long could that actually take.. it's a simple change!" types.. and then I started dating a programmer. It is simply amazing how much work goes into things; how even in the same programming language, two different people coding one thing can do it completely different ways... to the extent that only the original coder only really knows what's going on. Yeah, there are some basic guidelines to follow with any big project.. but a lot of time if the original coder leaves, whoever replaces them has to spend a good deal of time just looking at how the first guy did it to even get a handle on how to begin to fix it. Much respect for developers in general now... which has earned me the title of "fanboy" on many a forum.

Oh I know. I did some basic programming for college and man I still don't get it. And seriously to code this game would probably be around 10,000 single spaced pages of a book. And something on line 68985547 could be screwing up something on line 367. Not to mention you put a wrong , somewhere and everything goes to hell. Good luck finding the missing ,

Most of the problems with this game have nothing to do with code. You can't debug bad design.

ers101284b14_ESO

steinarmspreeb18_ESO wrote: »

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

Lalai wrote: »

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

Lalai wrote: »

In theory this sounds good (as in, it's a nice idea to think you'd have some control over stuff), but in practice I'd never ever want it.

I would wager a very, very small percentage of players have any programming, or project management experience. They may know what they'd prefer fixed first, but they don't have any idea how long it will take to get said thing fixed, how many people at the office are capable of working on said thing (are familiar with that specific bit of code), or how the systems work together on the back end of things. Maybe people really want thing A fixed.. but thing A depends upon thing B, which players don't really care about, or we don't hear about because it's not directly shown to players.

Basically, gamers just don't know enough about the actual business to be able to make an educated decision about what should be fixed first given all available factors.

Really? Cause according to the people on Facebook and the forums it's super simple and would only take 10 minutes to fix. They would know since their GEDs are the pride of their trailer park.

Haha. I have to admit.. I use to kinda be one of those "well gee, how long could that actually take.. it's a simple change!" types.. and then I started dating a programmer. It is simply amazing how much work goes into things; how even in the same programming language, two different people coding one thing can do it completely different ways... to the extent that only the original coder only really knows what's going on. Yeah, there are some basic guidelines to follow with any big project.. but a lot of time if the original coder leaves, whoever replaces them has to spend a good deal of time just looking at how the first guy did it to even get a handle on how to begin to fix it. Much respect for developers in general now... which has earned me the title of "fanboy" on many a forum.

Oh I know. I did some basic programming for college and man I still don't get it. And seriously to code this game would probably be around 10,000 single spaced pages of a book. And something on line 68985547 could be screwing up something on line 367. Not to mention you put a wrong , somewhere and everything goes to hell. Good luck finding the missing ,

I'm pretty sure they have developers with more training than your basic programming course .. or I at least hope so

I hope so too. But the fact is there are still so many lines of code and the people coding it are still human. Humans make mistakes.

Lets put it this way, this is Vanilla WoW's programming without any expansions or anything. Imagine having to search through all that to find what is messing with what. Any line can interact and screw up any other line.

http://www.amazon.com/World-Warcraft-Programming-Reference-Creating/dp/0470229810

steinarmspreeb18_ESO

Lalai wrote: »

In theory this sounds good (as in, it's a nice idea to think you'd have some control over stuff), but in practice I'd never ever want it.

I would wager a very, very small percentage of players have any programming, or project management experience. They may know what they'd prefer fixed first, but they don't have any idea how long it will take to get said thing fixed, how many people at the office are capable of working on said thing (are familiar with that specific bit of code), or how the systems work together on the back end of things. Maybe people really want thing A fixed.. but thing A depends upon thing B, which players don't really care about, or we don't hear about because it's not directly shown to players.

Basically, gamers just don't know enough about the actual business to be able to make an educated decision about what should be fixed first given all available factors.

So your saying that all players need to have programming or project management experience to be able to understand the implications of voting on an issue ?
That's just nonsense.

There are many ways to implement this, they could start by having a single development group assigned to the "Community backlog" ..

isengrimb16_ESO

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

Lalai wrote: »

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

Lalai wrote: »

In theory this sounds good (as in, it's a nice idea to think you'd have some control over stuff), but in practice I'd never ever want it.

I would wager a very, very small percentage of players have any programming, or project management experience. They may know what they'd prefer fixed first, but they don't have any idea how long it will take to get said thing fixed, how many people at the office are capable of working on said thing (are familiar with that specific bit of code), or how the systems work together on the back end of things. Maybe people really want thing A fixed.. but thing A depends upon thing B, which players don't really care about, or we don't hear about because it's not directly shown to players.

Basically, gamers just don't know enough about the actual business to be able to make an educated decision about what should be fixed first given all available factors.

Really? Cause according to the people on Facebook and the forums it's super simple and would only take 10 minutes to fix. They would know since their GEDs are the pride of their trailer park.

Haha. I have to admit.. I use to kinda be one of those "well gee, how long could that actually take.. it's a simple change!" types.. and then I started dating a programmer. It is simply amazing how much work goes into things; how even in the same programming language, two different people coding one thing can do it completely different ways... to the extent that only the original coder only really knows what's going on. Yeah, there are some basic guidelines to follow with any big project.. but a lot of time if the original coder leaves, whoever replaces them has to spend a good deal of time just looking at how the first guy did it to even get a handle on how to begin to fix it. Much respect for developers in general now... which has earned me the title of "fanboy" on many a forum.

Oh I know. I did some basic programming for college and man I still don't get it. And seriously to code this game would probably be around 10,000 single spaced pages of a book. And something on line 68985547 could be screwing up something on line 367. Not to mention you put a wrong , somewhere and everything goes to hell. Good luck finding the missing ,

Oh, aye. Anyone here ever had a Commodore Vic-20? Those things were tons of fun, oh boy. Maybe you could buy cassette tapes for to load a programme like space invaders onto your rig, but it was cheaper and more common to just go to the bookstore, and get a book with a hundred programmes in it.

What you got were lines and lines and lines of BASIC code that you had to type in yourself. God forbid you didn't understand even some of the coding language. More often than not, after typing in 2-300 lines of code, the game would refuse to run.

So then you check your typing, line by line. If the typing is OK, that means the code you got from the book was borked to begin with. This procedure could take HOURS (with no saves) just to find out you can't do anything with what you did.

Some years later, in the 1990s, I got ahold of a "Teach Yourself C++" book. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I'd have an easier time translating my cat's meows.

steinarmspreeb18_ESO

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

steinarmspreeb18_ESO wrote: »

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

Lalai wrote: »

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

Lalai wrote: »

In theory this sounds good (as in, it's a nice idea to think you'd have some control over stuff), but in practice I'd never ever want it.

I would wager a very, very small percentage of players have any programming, or project management experience. They may know what they'd prefer fixed first, but they don't have any idea how long it will take to get said thing fixed, how many people at the office are capable of working on said thing (are familiar with that specific bit of code), or how the systems work together on the back end of things. Maybe people really want thing A fixed.. but thing A depends upon thing B, which players don't really care about, or we don't hear about because it's not directly shown to players.

Basically, gamers just don't know enough about the actual business to be able to make an educated decision about what should be fixed first given all available factors.

Really? Cause according to the people on Facebook and the forums it's super simple and would only take 10 minutes to fix. They would know since their GEDs are the pride of their trailer park.

Haha. I have to admit.. I use to kinda be one of those "well gee, how long could that actually take.. it's a simple change!" types.. and then I started dating a programmer. It is simply amazing how much work goes into things; how even in the same programming language, two different people coding one thing can do it completely different ways... to the extent that only the original coder only really knows what's going on. Yeah, there are some basic guidelines to follow with any big project.. but a lot of time if the original coder leaves, whoever replaces them has to spend a good deal of time just looking at how the first guy did it to even get a handle on how to begin to fix it. Much respect for developers in general now... which has earned me the title of "fanboy" on many a forum.

Oh I know. I did some basic programming for college and man I still don't get it. And seriously to code this game would probably be around 10,000 single spaced pages of a book. And something on line 68985547 could be screwing up something on line 367. Not to mention you put a wrong , somewhere and everything goes to hell. Good luck finding the missing ,

I'm pretty sure they have developers with more training than your basic programming course .. or I at least hope so

I hope so too. But the fact is there are still so many lines of code and the people coding it are still human. Humans make mistakes.

Lets put it this way, this is Vanilla WoW's programming without any expansions or anything. Imagine having to search through all that to find what is messing with what. Any line can interact and screw up any other line.

http://www.amazon.com/World-Warcraft-Programming-Reference-Creating/dp/0470229810

It's just work and each issue takes time. They estimate the effort of each issue and prioritize based on impact etc.
But their estimation shows us approximately how long it takes which we can use as an input into voting.

ers101284b14_ESO

steinarmspreeb18_ESO wrote: »

Lalai wrote: »

In theory this sounds good (as in, it's a nice idea to think you'd have some control over stuff), but in practice I'd never ever want it.

I would wager a very, very small percentage of players have any programming, or project management experience. They may know what they'd prefer fixed first, but they don't have any idea how long it will take to get said thing fixed, how many people at the office are capable of working on said thing (are familiar with that specific bit of code), or how the systems work together on the back end of things. Maybe people really want thing A fixed.. but thing A depends upon thing B, which players don't really care about, or we don't hear about because it's not directly shown to players.

Basically, gamers just don't know enough about the actual business to be able to make an educated decision about what should be fixed first given all available factors.

So your saying that all players need to have programming or project management experience to be able to understand the implications of voting on an issue ?
That's just nonsense.

There are many ways to implement this, they could start by having a single development group assigned to the "Community backlog" ..

No. What I'm saying is that you don't know what is messing with what. You don't know how their development works, what is going on behind closed doors. You don't know how long fixing each thing is actually going to take or if fixing one thing is going to break another. You don't know how the game was made, how the workflow goes or if the suits upstairs are going to allow it or not. They can hear our complaints and what needs to be fixed and they can take that into account but they still have to do their jobs their way. That's like someone coming into your job and telling you how to do it even though they have no experience in it. I'm not saying there aren't people with programming and 3D modelling or online applications experience but most of the people on here have no clue on how anything works or is made. Like this post
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/111475/zenimax-ill-fix-eso-for-you
Do you think he could literally go in there and fix everything? I doubt it. All that people have here are ideas and ideas in the game industry are a flipping joke. They don't want your idea they want to see what you can physically do.

dennis.schmelzleb16_ESO

They can just reveal something like their weekly scrum meeting.

What they have done.
What problems did they encounter.
What are they going to do next (if finished with their sprint backlog.

Then people can vote on the next backlog.
No timeframe votes, just what should be done next.

Lalai

steinarmspreeb18_ESO wrote: »

Lalai wrote: »

In theory this sounds good (as in, it's a nice idea to think you'd have some control over stuff), but in practice I'd never ever want it.

I would wager a very, very small percentage of players have any programming, or project management experience. They may know what they'd prefer fixed first, but they don't have any idea how long it will take to get said thing fixed, how many people at the office are capable of working on said thing (are familiar with that specific bit of code), or how the systems work together on the back end of things. Maybe people really want thing A fixed.. but thing A depends upon thing B, which players don't really care about, or we don't hear about because it's not directly shown to players.

Basically, gamers just don't know enough about the actual business to be able to make an educated decision about what should be fixed first given all available factors.

So your saying that all players need to have programming or project management experience to be able to understand the implications of voting on an issue ?
That's just nonsense.

There are many ways to implement this, they could start by having a single development group assigned to the "Community backlog" ..

What I'm saying is that unless you know programming and project management, you should absolutely not be deciding the order work is performed in. Sure, you can vent what problems you're having.. or what complaints you have (which I'm pretty sure is what most this forum consists of).. but to actually get to make a decision based on votes from a bunch of uneducated folks when it comes to programming/group structure would not be a good idea.

You don't need the company to list everything they're working on fixing to complain about the stuff you want fixed first. The things players want fixed first are all going to be player-facing anyway, and thus are already visible to us. They're the things that negatively effect game play. Usually speaking those ones already get a pretty dang high priority already because they're what customers see. The fix may not come out as fast as you'd like, but perhaps it really did just take that long to fix the issue in the code. They already do have community reps that look through the complaints on the forums, reddit, fan websites, and even talk with different guilds to figure out what issues players are currently facing.. and then those reps report that to the devs, and the devs decide on priority. I'm not really sure how your suggestion is different from that other than players actually being the deciding factor, which I think is a bad idea.

What I do think they need is a better "known issues" thread. One that is updated weekly as patches roll out, and lists all of the actual known issues. The one that they have now over in the customer support forums is rather poor.

steinarmspreeb18_ESO

If you know anything about project management and or programming

dennis.schmelzleb16_ESO wrote: »

They can just reveal something like their weekly scrum meeting.

What they have done.
What problems did they encounter.
What are they going to do next (if finished with their sprint backlog.

Then people can vote on the next backlog.
No timeframe votes, just what should be done next.

Yes something like that, I think some people here are over complicating things because they don't understand the process.

1. There are tons of issues reported from /bug /help and on the forums which need to be screened to determine if it's an actual bug.
2. Bugs are first given a high level estimation, often small/medium/large
3. Change board will prioritize - this is where we could give them our "opinion" via voting system.
4. Issues are assigned to scrum teams based on their capacity
etc etc.

This applies to fix issues in the game, votes only apply to confirmed issues/bugs since they control the backlog.

The idea was that community has an input into prioritization.
And confirmed issues are visible to us.

dennis.schmelzleb16_ESO

I just reread the op.

Seems like some people have knowledge about it-projects and programming, but not about reading comprehension.

It`s obvious that shouldnt vote for certain timeframes as they have no clue and 95% of all votes would be "fix it now!"
But if given 5 backlogs for a team, people can vote which will be next.

They should also split the votes in something like "art department", "balancing", "Graphical bugs", "technical bugs" and so on.


I think its.pretty obvious how it should and CAN work without letting the players decide too much.
It would give them a direction and they wont work on things that only bother a small amount of loud forum qqers.