Player Council

[Mrsneed]

I think this server would benefit from a Player Council.

The concept is simple: a small group of players would act as representatives for the wider community and allow for staff to discuss ideas, existing concepts and systems, rule updates, and anything else that affects how the server runs. Representatives could be elected by the community, so the group actually reflects who plays here and what they want.

I think this is something that we all could benefit from based on the numerous miscommunication events that have occurred since the beginning of this server. Furthermore, a lot of decisions are being made without any real community input, and it's starting to damage everyone's relationship with each other. As we are seeing right now with the boosting change it is very evident that people in general are feeling like changes are happening to them instead of with them and that is clearly leading to frustration, distrust, and divide.

Admittedly, a player council cannot fix everything, but it would give the community a real voice and a direct channel to be heard before decisions are finalized, not after.

How it could work might involve elections, meetings, and transparency.

Elections could be community-driven with representatives being chosen by players, maybe every few months or annually, so that the council stays current and accountable to the people it represents.

Meetings could be conducted on a regular basis to discuss upcoming changes, ongoing issues or bugs, and review player concerns.

And transparency wraps it all together in a way that everyone can see it (like posting it all on a forum for example).

I'm speaking for a lot of people right now, but this is a TWoW clone server and the expectation is that its core is as a TWoW server. I don't think people mind new developers iterating on the foundation of TWoW but when you start changing the foundation then it's no longer TWoW. With this in mind I feel that player input is centric in keeping that experience on track. Staff would get a clearer picture of what that means from a player perspective and players in return get the sense of ownership in the outcome. And both parties regain trust.

I'm putting up a poll for the community as I'm personally interested in the players' opinions on something like this.

[Duke81]

If the discord is anything to go by then no, i don't want you people to have any power at all.

[Zvyrhol]

Actually Player Council already exists. It's this forum and access to it is open for everyone. Here, we don't have as many people as on Turtle forum so the likelihood of devs/owners reading your suggestion is much higher than it was on Turtle. Just like in the closed council. Only differences are that there is lack of communication from devs to the playerbase about their plans and there are no meetings. But really, meetings aren't necessary if devs shared their PLANS on the forum. Open discussion would emerge naturally.