Regarding the questions about the Class Changes Twitter Chat

[GrimbleGrumble]

In closing the Official Discussion thread in which to pose questions about Class Changes, Sapience said:

Closing this down so the team has time to answer the questions we were able to pull from these. I appreciate all the feedback and opinions and editorials, I jut wish we had had more actual questions. Going forward we'll try to make it more clear that these aren't discussion threads, they're places to post very specific questions. Much like how we made the Tell the Community Team threads very narrow focused.

As was pointed out in that very thread, it is difficult to ask questions about something about which people have scant little information. Could you please explain how, going forward, the Community is supposed to ask actual questions about something we know nothing about? If you had asked for questions about Big Battles before revealing them to us, do you think the Community would have come up with good, relevant questions?

It is clear that the main concerns people have about Class Changes fall into a couple general categories: First, people want to know which skills are being removed and how this will change their playstyle. Second, people want to know what will happen with Traits: Virtues, Race, Class, and Legendary Traits. Will they all be gone? Just some of them?

Thanks for opening up an Official Discussion for the Class Changes, but I think your expectations are a bit high if you think we can ask good questions without first having good information. Once again, just try to imagine if you had asked for questions BEFORE releasing information on Big Battles. How relevant would those questions have been?

[Nyrion]

You could try asking questions in which the answers would *give* you information? It's really not that hard.

[andracy]

I hope and i think that Sapience was referred to the less useful post from there, not questions, only usual stuff about negating the ideea about changing this *perfect working as intented system* in my opinion.
In the same time, i am agree with you sir, because this topic hit us like an truck, ppl did not realised that Turbine WILL change this system either we like it or not and we barely knew how to react, not mentioning that we did not know which is the best thing to ask about the new system. So when i saw ..."they're places to post very specific questions.", i wonder what is an good specific question about an unknow change ...

[Frieja]

Thank you GrimbleGrumble for your post. That's exactly how I feel. In fact, I did NOT ask a question on the thread, because I had no idea what to ask. I know nothing about the new system, so I could not formulate a good question. I wish they would've released a Developer Diary and THEN done the dev chat with questions.

[GrimbleGrumble]

Thank you GrimbleGrumble for your post. That's exactly how I feel. In fact, I did NOT ask a question on the thread, because I had no idea what to ask. I know nothing about the new system, so I could not formulate a good question. I wish they would've released a Developer Diary and THEN done the dev chat with questions.

Yes, I would have liked to have a Dev Diary and THEN have a chance to ask questions. Instead, it appears it will be the other way around. Ask (necessarily ignorant) questions, find out your hunches were all wrong (or not), THEN get a Dev Diary that explains things. I'm trying to not be pessimistic about this, but it seems like they want to appear to be interacting with the Community. I just feel like our job in this interaction was made very difficult by lack of information. So hopefully they don't just cherry-pick questions with simple and easy answers but instead use this as an opportunity to give us some real info.

[Sapience]

You could try asking questions in which the answers would *give* you information? It's really not that hard.

This exactly. As with the 20Questions about big battles where no one knew a single thing, but were still asking questions hoping we'd tell them. So we took those questions and answered them.

Usually the best way to find out information about something you don't know about is to ask. So we're giving you a lot of opportunities to ask.

I know there is tomato soup exists. I don't know how it's made. I can ask someone.
I know class changes are coming. I don't know what it means for me. So I can ask someone.

I suppose one could make a similar argument that any comment about the changes being good or bad isn't valid or relevant because you haven't seen them or been told about them. So how could you have any kind of opinion? Actually you could apply that to just about anything.

As for my comment, those who remember the Tell the Community Team threads know we had a pretty hard set of rules in those threads. Basically if you weren't answering a question asked in the OP or asking a question you were told to ask in the OP your thread was removed. Those threads held some FANTASTIC feedback as a result. There were no arguments, no lengthy editorials on the state of the game unrelated to the question, no bickering over whose opinion was 'right', just the information we asked for. Even when we asked about things we hadn't discussed yet. Going forward when we do question threads, we may reinstate that level of 'on topic only' requirement.

[Fredelas]

Usually the best way to find out information about something you don't know about is to ask. So we're giving you a lot of opportunities to ask.

I know there is tomato soup exists. I don't know how it's made. I can ask someone.
I know class changes are coming. I don't know what it means for me. So I can ask someone.

Are the developers prepared to answer "What do the class changes mean for me?" or "How will it work?" in 140 characters or less?

I think for this particular topic, it would have been helpful to have published a developer diary first. That way, players could ask specific questions about specific features or changes.

[Frieja]

I know there is tomato soup exists. I don't know how it's made. I can ask someone.

Okay, let's take this analogy and develop it the way I see this Q&A:

Does the tomato soup have carrots in it? No.
Does the tomato soup have garlic in it? No.
Does the tomato soup have peppers in it? No.
Does the tomato soup have tomatoes in it? YES!
Do you cook it on med-high heat? No.
Do you cook it on high heat? No.
Do you cook it in a microwave? No.
Do you cook it on a stove top? YES!
etc....

Now, if for example, we were told that we'd be having tomato soup from a can that would be reheated on low-heat on the stove-top, we could then focus our questions on more relevant things like:
What other foods would go well with our tomato soup?
Can we add any other special ingredients to our soup?
Is the soup spicy?

[GrimbleGrumble]

This exactly. As with the 20Questions about big battles where no one knew a single thing, but were still asking questions hoping we'd tell them. So we took those questions and answered them.

Usually the best way to find out information about something you don't know about is to ask. So we're giving you a lot of opportunities to ask.

I know there is tomato soup exists. I don't know how it's made. I can ask someone.
I know class changes are coming. I don't know what it means for me. So I can ask someone.

I suppose one could make a similar argument that any comment about the changes being good or bad isn't valid or relevant because you haven't seen them or been told about them. So how could you have any kind of opinion? Actually you could apply that to just about anything.

As for my comment, those who remember the Tell the Community Team threads know we had a pretty hard set of rules in those threads. Basically if you weren't answering a question asked in the OP or asking a question you were told to ask in the OP your thread was removed. Those threads held some FANTASTIC feedback as a result. There were no arguments, no lengthy editorials on the state of the game unrelated to the question, no bickering over whose opinion was 'right', just the information we asked for. Even when we asked about things we hadn't discussed yet. Going forward when we do question threads, we may reinstate that level of 'on topic only' requirement.

Thanks for your reply Rick. Your analogy seems a bit off to me. We weren't told we were getting tomato soup, just that we were getting soup and could ask questions about it. Without knowing what kind of 'soup' we were getting, it seemed a bit pointless to ask questions about it, beyond the basics that were asked many many times in that thread. I could go on and on about ingredients: Is X in the soup? Assuming Y is in the soup, how much did you add and why not use Z instead? If it turns out there is no X, Y, or Z in the soup, well then I've wasted your time and my own. In my opinion, the 'type' of soup in your example would be akin to giving us some kind of a 'menu' (like a Dev Diary) that gave us an idea of what we were getting, then we could go from there. Are the tomatoes organic? Etc etc. I just feel that more informed Community would have asked more appropriate questions.

Thanks again. Ok now I'm hungry for grilled cheese and tomato soup.

[Peresbert]

Read the DDO forums *cough cough*. DDOs changes have sounded a lot like what LotRO devs have been talking about. We have seen tree lines before. Even in the game with War Steeds. They allow flexibility in builds and allows you to customize your class. I am behind the changes being made 100% even though it will be very difficult at first. My major questions is how many points per level and how does this effect the current class roles. Other than that when we get the Beta we can start testing builds.

[Sapience]

Are the developers prepared to answer "What do the class changes mean for me?" or "How will it work?" in 140 characters or less?

Based on the questions we pulled from the other thread and the answers in them? Yes.

Okay, let's take this analogy and develop it the way I see this Q&A:

Does the tomato soup have carrots in it? No.
Does the tomato soup have garlic in it? No.
Does the tomato soup have peppers in it? No.
Does the tomato soup have tomatoes in it? YES!
Do you cook it on med-high heat? No.
Do you cook it on high heat? No.
Do you cook it in a microwave? No.
Do you cook it on a stove top? YES!
etc....

Now, if for example, we were told that we'd be having tomato soup from a can that would be reheated on low-heat on the stove-top, we could then focus our questions on more relevant things like:
What other foods would go well with our tomato soup?
Can we add any other special ingredients to our soup?
Is the soup spicy?

Why can't you ask those questions regardless of whether or not the soup is from a can? I would. You're getting tomato soup. Ask anything you'd like. You already know you're getting the soup and that that soup is coming with crackers (trait trees). Think ever so slightly broader and wider than the unrealistically narrow focus of your straw-man questions above and the world opens up.

[DanteIL]

Yea, I also thought that Sapience's response when closing out the Twitter question thread was a bit over the top:

Closing this down so the team has time to answer the questions we were able to pull from these. I appreciate all the feedback and opinions and editorials, I jut wish we had had more actual questions. Going forward we'll try to make it more clear that these aren't discussion threads, they're places to post very specific questions. Much like how we made the Tell the Community Team threads very narrow focused.

There were 125 player posts in that thread (not including the first post and the last post, but including multiple posts from same individuals)

By my quick count, 79 of those 125 posts (63%) contained honest-to-goodness questions related to the skill changes. This doesn't take into account the fact that many of those posts contained multiple questions, so the number of actual questions was quite a bit higher than 79. (although, admittedly this also doesn't take into account the likely fact that many of those questions were probably similar to others asked elsewhere in the thread).

Maybe you didn't like the ratio of question-posts to editorial-posts, but is this not enough for you to draw upon to get a sense of what players' concerns/questions are, going into the class skill revamp? Obviously, you can certainly make these kinds of threads 'question-focused only' (which can be useful, I agree) but it seems disingenuous to say that you wish that you had more actual questions, in this case at least.

[Fredelas]

This exactly. As with the 20Questions about big battles where no one knew a single thing, but were still asking questions hoping we'd tell them. So we took those questions and answered them.

There are some key differences:

1. I'm guessing the discussion from which the information on Big Battles was distilled didn't take place in the span of only about an hour.
2. The questions and answers weren't limited to 140 characters or less. Seriously, look at how long some of the answers were compared to the questions.

This is why I think having a developer diary a week or so in advance would have helped. That would give time for players to digest the information and ask relevant, meaningful questions, and give the developers the time to formulate concise answers.

I don't think Twitter is a good medium to discuss this particular topic.

[SNy-lotrolinux-EU]

I am with the OP. As to Sapience's comment. D'oh. Tomato-soup? Like, seriously?

[...] We have seen tree lines before. [...] They allow flexibility in builds and allows you to customize your class.

Uh-huh.

Are you aware that the CURRENT system allows flexibility in builds? That it allows you to customize your class? Rendering this supposed argument null and void?

Are you ALSO aware that the devs _specifically_ mentioned "difficult decisions" that would await us with the new system? That this sounds precisely like NOT allowing flexibility and customization but more like limitation and cookie-cutter?

Waiting for the questions and answers to that chat to appear, but I see no reason to hold my breath.

SNy

[spelunker]

This exactly. As with the 20Questions about big battles where no one knew a single thing, but were still asking questions hoping we'd tell them. So we took those questions and answered them.

Usually the best way to find out information about something you don't know about is to ask. So we're giving you a lot of opportunities to ask.

I know there is tomato soup exists. I don't know how it's made. I can ask someone.
I know class changes are coming. I don't know what it means for me. So I can ask someone.

I suppose one could make a similar argument that any comment about the changes being good or bad isn't valid or relevant because you haven't seen them or been told about them. So how could you have any kind of opinion? Actually you could apply that to just about anything.

As for my comment, those who remember the Tell the Community Team threads know we had a pretty hard set of rules in those threads. Basically if you weren't answering a question asked in the OP or asking a question you were told to ask in the OP your thread was removed. Those threads held some FANTASTIC feedback as a result. There were no arguments, no lengthy editorials on the state of the game unrelated to the question, no bickering over whose opinion was 'right', just the information we asked for. Even when we asked about things we hadn't discussed yet. Going forward when we do question threads, we may reinstate that level of 'on topic only' requirement.

I must have missed the part where players submitted the questions for the Big Battles 20 questions, they seemed almost entirely made up of questions made up by people privy to information not available to the general lotro public.

Making users fire off blind questions hoping things stick is generally a waste of time for everyone involved. You have to sort through mounds of questions of no relevance since people have no way of knowing whether their questions have anything to do with being changed. Add in the fact that this is a twitter chat with character limits, where multipart questions or answers that might actually allow for narrowing down topics based on reply's are not possible, and we're going to get a dev chat that leaves a lot of people dissatisfied with what they're able to take from it.

This is precisely the type of interaction that you, Sapience, look back on as an example of you doing part of your job in getting the Devs interacting with the players, and critics like me look back on as lip service at best, and a wasted opportunity.

[Frieja]

Think ever so slightly broader and wider than the unrealistically narrow focus of your straw-man questions above and the world opens up.

I'm sorry if you think my questions are unrealistically focused. I wasn't trying to make "straw-man" questions. This is the dilemma I faced when asked to post a question. I felt like I would be throwing out random stuff in hopes that I'd at least graze the target of information.

I'll say it again: I didn't know what to ask.

However, I am very much looking forward to the dev chat. Perhaps those with broader and wider thinking than I came up with good questions

[Rasdun]

Guys, have you not played 20 questions before?

First question should be:
Do the class changes belong to the plant, animal, or mineral kingdom?

[SNy-lotrolinux-EU]

[...]
This is precisely the type of interaction that you, Sapience, look back on as an example of you doing part of your job in getting the Devs interacting with the players, and critics like me look back on as lip service at best, and a wasted opportunity.

Thank you for so eloquently putting it! I fully agree.

SNy

[spelunker]

Guys, have you not played 20 questions before?

First question should be:
Do the class changes belong to the plant, animal, or mineral kingdom?

20 questions where you have to ask all the questions before getting a single answer would be challenging indeed. I'm intrigued.

[Sapience]

20 questions where you have to ask all the questions before getting a single answer would be challenging indeed. I'm intrigued.

All of our previous 20 questions came from players with no more information than you have.

[Frieja]

Who asked the questions for the Big Battles? I hadn't even heard of Big Battles before that 20 Questions thread.

[BangoTwinkletoes]

Are the developers prepared to answer "What do the class changes mean for me?" or "How will it work?" in 140 characters or less?

I think for this particular topic, it would have been helpful to have published a developer diary first. That way, players could ask specific questions about specific features or changes.

This would have been a good idea. 140 character limit is going to be hard to go into the details that I know many of us will want to hear about. Hopefully there will be a follow up dev diary or at least an overview where some of the issues raised in tonight's Q&A can be addressed in more detail.

Anyhow, looking forward to seeing the feed.

[GrimbleGrumble]

20 questions where you have to ask all the questions before getting a single answer would be challenging indeed. I'm intrigued.

I think this and other replies echo the concern of my OP: our ignorance is vast, and thus our questions will be vague and likely irrelevant. Let's hope we'll have a second round of questions about this topic AFTER we have enough information to form good questions. I couldn't imagine going to one of my college classes, for example, Philosophy of Space and Time, and being told to just 'start asking questions.' Maybe that's a bad example, because that course had a syllabus.

I really appreciate the efforts of the Dev Team to provide opportunities for Q&A with the Community, I just feel like, beyond the 5 or so most common questions, there's no way to ask penetrating questions about these Class Changes until we know something about them. I remain hopeful that when these 20 Questions are posted on the Forum here, the Devs and Sapience will hang around, like they did for the Big Battles 20 Questions, to answer what I expect to be loads of follow-up questions.

[Crell_1]

Who asked the questions for the Big Battles? I hadn't even heard of Big Battles before that 20 Questions thread.

The original questions were asked by members of the Player council.

[Macroscian]

Will hunter be built to self-buff every few seconds at irregular intervals?