Question

[computer420]

Sapience..

What is you actually do.. besides sit on the forums locking threads and making stupid webisodes ?

[Sapience]

The short list off the top of my head...

• Plan and Organize the player parties at events like PAX.
• Corall devs for dev chats.
• Write up all the transcripts for the dev chats and post them.
• Convince devs to come to player events and talk to the scary players (don't bite my devs please)
• Organize and ride herd on devs while they write dev diaries. (and make sure they get translated)
• Create the player council (announcement tomorrow!)
• Give other members of the community team ideas and let them go nuts with them (Celestrata's Fashion week is a good idea of an idea gone wild).
• Voice the concerns of players in meetings with devs.
• Voice the concerns of players in meetings with Execs.
• Harass Senior Producer Aaron campbell because he sits next to me.
• Harass our Quartermasters because one sits on the other side of me.
• Try to help players who have hit a wall with CS and Account support if I can, by taking their concerns directly to those department heads.
• Make stupid webisodes (wait, you mentioned that...)
• Get marketing to pay for things so we can give them to players. (Parties, swag, DVDs).
• Harass Berephon to come up with trivia questions for Twitter giveaways.
• Try to expand time so I actually have enough hours in the day to get all this stuff done.
• Co-ordinate giveaways with Marketing - like the Hobbit Blu Ray give aways.
• Help decide on the swag for events (I voted against another black hoodie this year so they're all navy blue)
• Tell the ecommerce team they can't be serious.
• Carry around point codes most of the time so when I meet players I can give them a "thank you" for playing.
• Convince the dev team to create cool titles and other things for players (The Sociable, The Wise, and The Well met are all Community team requests that dev approved, so are both PAX Horses, the player designed cloaks, and steeds, the player designed relics, and some other little in game things).
• Tell Celestrata she can't be serious.
• Accept that she is.
• Lotteries.
• Write patch notes.
• Write known issues.
• Help co-ordinate betas.
• Take an unacceptably long time to answer a massive number of PMs (I try!)
• Accept the fact that my inbox will never be caught up and clean out thousands of emails each week.
• Help get player created designs onto mannequins (if you have some, let me know!)
• Work with our Web team to make sure the next version of the community sites function as they should.
• Fight fires.
• Herd cats.
• Answer questions.

I'll add more since people seem to add more to that list for me on a daily basis.

Oh....

• Use by bartending days to come up with freakin' amazing themed drinks for our player party at pax this year. Anyone want a "Watcher in the water"? (Yes it has RUM in it!)

[Arlowyn]

Well played Sapience... well played. Can't stop laughing.

[Southpa]

Hehe. I must admit - well played.

[computer420]

yeah i can make up a list of lies to.

You sit on the fourms locking threads, throwing out CoC quotes like youre the boss, stuffing your fat face..
please, just stop the lies.

Turbine and its lying... will it ever end.
Nope.

[computer420]

• Voice the concerns of players in meetings with devs.
• Voice the concerns of players in meetings with Execs.

LOL, youre joking right? HAHA
turbine doesnt listen to the players.. If they did, none of this content would be released from beta before all issues are addresssed.

Example : Scaled BG durchest farm for 2nd ages.. COuple weeks later Hotfix, not more
Rohan instances : 1st ages dropping on t1, people farm.. week or so later... hotfix, no more 1st ages on t1's.

So please.. all this was made aware to Turbine and your dev team in beta, yet you ignored it until the game launches and everyone's farming. Then you fix it.


i'll stop there, i really dont need to need to elaborate any further.

[pppppppp]

The short list off the top of my head...

• Convince devs to come to player events and talk to the scary players (don't bite my devs please)
• Make stupid webisodes (wait, you mentioned that...)

LOL! I love those 2 options! Hahaha! very funny!

[Sapience]

yeah i can make up a list of lies to.

You sit on the fourms locking threads, throwing out CoC quotes like youre the boss, stuffing your fat face..
please, just stop the lies.

Turbine and its lying... will it ever end.
Nope.

You're right. You caught me. Every word is made up. Easily verified because anyone reading that lists knows that not one thing in it has ever happened.

[Widmore]

Oh....

• Use by bartending days to come up with freakin' amazing themed drinks for our player party at pax this year. Anyone want a "Watcher in the water"? (Yes it has RUM in it!)

Wait, is that for real?
That would be awesome!

There's another list for all of us, LOTRO themed drinks!

But if I'm ever served something called the Kramp, I'm outta there....

[computer420]

You're right. You caught me. Every word is made up. Easily verified because anyone reading that lists knows that not one thing in it has ever happened.

i'll say again..


LOL, youre joking right? HAHA
turbine doesnt listen to the players.. If they did, none of this content would be released from beta before all issues are addresssed.

Example : Scaled BG durchest farm for 2nd ages.. COuple weeks later Hotfix, not more
Rohan instances : 1st ages dropping on t1, people farm.. week or so later... hotfix, no more 1st ages on t1's.

So please.. all this was made aware to Turbine and your dev team in beta, yet you ignored it until the game launches and everyone's farming. Then you fix it.


i'll stop there, i really dont need to need to elaborate any further.

[Zithlinraiss]

Add 1 more to his list:

Reply to insulting posts with grace and humor.

Loved the response, especially the herding cats bit!

[Zarin]

i'll say again..


LOL, youre joking right? HAHA
turbine doesnt listen to the players.. If they did, none of this content would be released from beta before all issues are addresssed.

Example : Scaled BG durchest farm for 2nd ages.. COuple weeks later Hotfix, not more
Rohan instances : 1st ages dropping on t1, people farm.. week or so later... hotfix, no more 1st ages on t1's.

So please.. all this was made aware to Turbine and your dev team in beta, yet you ignored it until the game launches and everyone's farming. Then you fix it.


i'll stop there, i really dont need to need to elaborate any further.

I believe it's part of their plan to Cook Witches and Get Money. They must have made big store sales through all the solo players and casual players getting their first ever first ager for no effort.

[Widmore]

• Tell Celestrata she can't be serious.

Was this ever responded to with, "And don't call me Shirley"?

[djheydt]

Add 1 more to his list:

Reply to insulting posts with grace and humor.

Loved the response, especially the herding cats bit!

Seconded, and + rep to Sapience.

[Orivien]

The short list off the top of my head...

• Plan and Organize the player parties at events like PAX.
• Corall devs for dev chats.
• Write up all the transcripts for the dev chats and post them.
• Convince devs to come to player events and talk to the scary players (don't bite my devs please)
• Organize and ride herd on devs while they write dev diaries. (and make sure they get translated)
• Create the player council (announcement tomorrow!)
• Give other members of the community team ideas and let them go nuts with them (Celestrata's Fashion week is a good idea of an idea gone wild).
• Voice the concerns of players in meetings with devs.
• Voice the concerns of players in meetings with Execs.
• Harass Senior Producer Aaron campbell because he sits next to me.
• Harass our Quartermasters because one sits on the other side of me.
• Try to help players who have hit a wall with CS and Account support if I can, by taking their concerns directly to those department heads.
• Make stupid webisodes (wait, you mentioned that...)
• Get marketing to pay for things so we can give them to players. (Parties, swag, DVDs).
• Harass Berephon to come up with trivia questions for Twitter giveaways.
• Try to expand time so I actually have enough hours in the day to get all this stuff done.
• Co-ordinate giveaways with Marketing - like the Hobbit Blu Ray give aways.
• Help decide on the swag for events (I voted against another black hoodie this year so they're all navy blue)
• Tell the ecommerce team they can't be serious.
• Carry around point codes most of the time so when I meet players I can give them a "thank you" for playing.
• Convince the dev team to create cool titles and other things for players (The Sociable, The Wise, and The Well met are all Community team requests that dev approved, so are both PAX Horses, the player designed cloaks, and steeds, the player designed relics, and some other little in game things).
• Tell Celestrata she can't be serious.
• Accept that she is.
• Lotteries.
• Write patch notes.
• Write known issues.
• Help co-ordinate betas.
• Take an unacceptably long time to answer a massive number of PMs (I try!)
• Accept the fact that my inbox will never be caught up and clean out thousands of emails each week.
• Help get player created designs onto mannequins (if you have some, let me know!)
• Work with our Web team to make sure the next version of the community sites function as they should.
• Fight fires.
• Herd cats.
• Answer questions.

I'll add more since people seem to add more to that list for me on a daily basis.

Oh....

• Use by bartending days to come up with freakin' amazing themed drinks for our player party at pax this year. Anyone want a "Watcher in the water"? (Yes it has RUM in it!)

i gave you +rep just to satisfy myself although noone can see it, that's how much i just started to love you

[Sapience]

Wait, is that for real?
That would be awesome!

There's another list for all of us, LOTRO themed drinks!

But if I'm ever served something called the Kramp, I'm outta there....

Not made up. We'll have them at the Player Party on Friday. There's a DDO themed drink as well.

[Joreel]

Sapience...

Thanks for support us players and putting up with the whiners and trolls who show up. Although most people don't know what you do outside the forums, you work hard and I for one am glad that your here for us :-).

[Yula_the_Mighty]

LOL, youre joking right? HAHA
turbine doesnt listen to the players.. If they did, none of this content would be released from beta before all issues are addresssed.

Example : Scaled BG durchest farm for 2nd ages.. COuple weeks later Hotfix, not more
Rohan instances : 1st ages dropping on t1, people farm.. week or so later... hotfix, no more 1st ages on t1's.

So please.. all this was made aware to Turbine and your dev team in beta, yet you ignored it until the game launches and everyone's farming. Then you fix it.


i'll stop there, i really dont need to need to elaborate any further.

I can't speak for Turbine practices. I work in software development in a different market segment, we often release updates that have defects. Management will take the customer feedback from prelim testing when there are problems only affect a small portion of customer base. Or perhaps the defect is not considered that bad. We will go live.

I never worked on a product that was bug free. I never worked on major update that did not go live with numerous defects. Often hundreds of them for larger more complex applications. If we waited until they were all fixed, we never release the update. We would not have a product. We would not have jobs. The CEO would discontinue the product and get rid all of us.

I have been thru the:
Development - The product is not working well to live deploy
CEO - Effective immediately the product or update is cancelled.
CEO - I want 90% people working on it dismissed.

several times. Sometimes I have been one of the 10%. I have been in 90%.

Although, you are unhappy with some of the bugs that go live. The alternative is to not get the content at all. The choice is often not hold it in development until it works or release it with defects in live. Instead it is release to live with defects or cancel the feature.

The number of features cancelled in development is quite large. I have worked in development in some company where 80-90% of all features never make it live. They are quietly cancelled without the customers knowing the feature is being worked on. The cancellation rate is the reason a lot of companies do not talk about what is the development pipe because the company knows that very few of the products or features will ever be delivered to the customers.

[GV-Tanith]

[*]Convince devs to come to player events and talk to the scary players (don't bite my devs please)

What do you mean? Do you wish we were scary, or that we're scary whether you want it or not, or that the devs think we're scary, or that player events are attended only by scary players?

All kidding aside, has this ever happened? I see devs sashaying all over the place in...um, another game...but I think the only Turbine folks I've ever seen in LOTRO were the occasional GM's. It would be fun to attend such an event, though.

[DarkCntry]

i'll say again..


LOL, youre joking right? HAHA
turbine doesnt listen to the players.. If they did, none of this content would be released from beta before all issues are addresssed.

Example : Scaled BG durchest farm for 2nd ages.. COuple weeks later Hotfix, not more
Rohan instances : 1st ages dropping on t1, people farm.. week or so later... hotfix, no more 1st ages on t1's.

So please.. all this was made aware to Turbine and your dev team in beta, yet you ignored it until the game launches and everyone's farming. Then you fix it.


i'll stop there, i really dont need to need to elaborate any further.

You know what would be the smart thing to do? Don't comment about software development practices unless you are actually aware how the process works.

Software defects are going to happen no matter how much time is spent prior to release to the wild, and the more time it stays out of production, the more chances it'll have to totally break down and never get released.

For a game example of this, look at the original path of Duke Nukem Forever. They kept returning the game to base development scale because they wanted it to be perfect and 'revolutionary'...it bankrupted the studio.

The balance is to understand what is capable of being released without it being a 'game-breaker'.

[chrismilly]

• Convince devs to come to player events and talk to the scary players (don't bite my devs please)

You know, speaking of events..

Can we get another Dev/Gm event?
I miss amarthiel(sp?)

[Frisco]

Such restraint from Sapience! I would have edited the original post by now to something silly, like:

Question
Sapience..

What is you actually do.. besides sit on the forums locking threads [started by emo teenagers] and making those [awesome] webisodes? [Also, are you single? My single mom needs a good-looking man in her life.] [Thank you for taking time out of your busy day to answer my inane questions!]

-[Your biggest fan!]

{Last edited by Sapience at 11:00am}

[Nasami]

Wait, is that for real?
That would be awesome!

There's another list for all of us, LOTRO themed drinks!

But if I'm ever served something called the Kramp, I'm outta there....

And to get into Sapience's bar, "speak 'friend', and enter".

Which means, of course, we need a drink called the Angmartini.

[Fredelas]

Rumor has it Sapience is one of the extras in the classic short-form documentary "Cat Herders" from 2000.

[CmdrMagic]

• Convince devs to come to player events and talk to the scary players (don't bite my devs please)

I love this one.

Such restraint from Sapience! I would have edited the original post by now to something silly, like:

Question
Sapience..

What is you actually do.. besides sit on the forums locking threads [started by emo teenagers] and making those [awesome] webisodes? [Also, are you single? My single mom needs a good-looking man in her life.] [Thank you for taking time out of your busy day to answer my inane questions!]

-[Your biggest fan!]

{Last edited by Sapience at 11:00am}

Agreed. I am very impressed by Sapience's humor in handling this.