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Topic: How to deal with people who actually want another game ... (Read 9194 times) previous topic - next topic

How to deal with people who actually want another game ...

Some people come to this forum, and file like 5 or more extension requests, and then argue with the developers why their requests are "must have" for Simutrans.

The amount of changes wanted makes me think, they rather want a different game.

But also, they want Simutrans to be this different game, and that the point that puzzles me.

I suspect they lack alternatives, and also, they can't make such projects of their own, not even mod or fork existing projects, and therefore want the developers to do the changes for them, regardless what the developers think about the changes.

Question is, how to deal with those people? Ignoring is rude. Arguing takes time and is annoying to the developers at times, particularly if they argued the same point with ten other people in the past, and the newcomers do not bother to read the old discussions.

These days I see more of this going on in the forum. I actually don't even read the postings anymore, but I see Prissi involved in such discussions again, despite his little time for Simutrans.

Any ideas what to do about it? I hoped Simutrans-Experimental would take some of the heat from Simutrans and attract those requests, but still they are addressed to Simutrans Standard ...


Edit: I think I'd like to see those people make their own mods or branches, and just offer patches for the features, and leave it to the devs to include the patches into the trunk, or not.

Re: How to deal with people who actually want another game ...

Reply #1 –
I don't think that it is correct to say that most of the people who make a number of extension requests want a different game entirely: the requests appear to be ones which, if fulfilled, would leave almost all of the things that are unique about Simutrans in tact - the things requested to be changed are small in relation to the whole.

As for Simutrans-Experimental, I often notice that many of the things that people request are already in Simutrans-Experimental...
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Re: How to deal with people who actually want another game ...

Reply #2 –
In my opinion, Simutrans-Experimental is, for the purposes of this conversation, headed towards being a different game. I'm not saying that's good or bad - in fact, frankly, I hold mixed opinions about it, but have decided it's a good thing overall. ;-)

The problem is precisely as Hajo has said... it takes time away from Prissi.

I, for one, try to head off requests I feel confident will never happen -- precisely to try and save his time... but I often don't feel very confident. First, I don't know what's planned; second, several of the attributes of my ADHD interfere with this - I have a hard time remembering details in general (pun intended, U suppose), and I'm always wary of putting words in others' mouths (i.e. what Simutrans is planning, what's possible, and what's not).

I'm sometimes surprised at what extension requests are accepted, and even sometimes what's rejected. So although there are some things I feel confident about answering (double track on a single tile), many things (airplanes, overtaking) that might seem impossible have become reality... :)

I look forward to the discussion in this thread. Perhaps we can come up with some great ideas.

A while back, when I set the forum up on this server, I'd made it so that regular members couldn't post in certain boards - only the "New Requests" board that existed at that time. One of the purposes was to address this precise problem. My intent was to have Devotees or moderators review each request and move it only if it wasn't something that they couldn't answer, e.g. "PLZ DOUBLE TRACK" would not have to go to extension requests...

I don't think I explained all that very well; I suppose we didn't discuss it (but sometimes when we discuss things, we can't come to consensus, so sometimes I felt I should do and get opinions after... :) )

But I guess we can discuss it and other things now :D

Re: How to deal with people who actually want another game ...

Reply #3 –
One should be careful about being too defensive of extension requests, even from new users: doing so might well make such people, who are no doubt perfectly sincere in posting their requests, disinclined to participate further in the community.

If extension requests are denied for game-play reasons, a clear explanation can go a long way. Adding frequently to the "denied extension requests" section as necessary might help.

If extension requests are denied for techincal or time reasons only, the limitation in the resources of the coders in an open-source project can be emphasised, and the poster encouraged to have a go at writing the feature her/himself.

However, I do not agree that extension requests, in any quantity, from users new or old or anything in between, should be discouraged simply because it takes time to answer them: many extension requests can suggest very useful features that would not be reasonably easy to code when time allows: Borogoth's recent suggestion to have a "pick up only" and "set down only" option in schedules is perhaps one such request.
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Re: How to deal with people who actually want another game ...

Reply #4 –
But I think the emphasis is more that it takes *Prissi's* time, as opposed to the rest of us... Not so much to discourage new requests.

Of course, there is also the problem of people requesting things that have been discussed in depth on the forum previously... but again, that's something we can help head off at the p****...

Re: How to deal with people who actually want another game ...

Reply #5 –
That's still not a reason to discourage requests, some of which might be useful. Prissi doesn't have to answer them all personally, although what he answers is really a matter for him. Perhaps there could be something in the guide about posting extension requests that one can't necessarily expect an answer from the developer for each request, as the developer tends to be busy? Perhaps Prissi's view should be sought?
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Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

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Re: How to deal with people who actually want another game ...

Reply #6 –
Quote from: Isaac.Eiland-Hall – on
But I think the emphasis is more that it takes *Prissi's* time, as opposed to the rest of us... Not so much to discourage new requests.

"not so much to discourage new requests" means I'm saying I'm not trying to discourage new requests...

Quote from: jamespetts – on
Prissi doesn't have to answer them all personally
Quote from: Isaac.Eiland-Hall – on
But I think the emphasis is more that it takes *Prissi's* time,

These two quotes are saying pretty much the same...

Re: How to deal with people who actually want another game ...

Reply #7 –
I didn't read every post, just Hajo's. My spare time is over. :-\

Quick question: why only Prissi?

Don't we have a DevTeam or at least a serious group of coders?

Create a DevTeam and a place where they all can discuss and organize the works (like in old forum), and Prissi make known his thoughts and goals for Simutrans and the way how things should work out. I think he could transfer some powers to reliable people; Prissi would be the moderator and manager of this group, obviously.

Re: How to deal with people who actually want another game ...

Reply #8 –
I think players make new extension requests because they love Simutrans and they want to contribute their ideas to make it better, even if they cannot contribute programming-wise.

But I agree with Isaac and Igor's suggestion to have a separate team to review and screen extension requests. Prissi can give them some general guidelines as to what are impossible, undesirable, or involving complete re-writing of a signficant portion of existing code, etc., and let them know what are on his long to-do list and his priorities. The team will then judge based on these criteria and info as well as on past extension requests. They will relay feasible ones to Prissi for his further consideration. The team can also emphasize the fact that developers' time are limited and encourage the suggestion makers to try coding the new features himself/herself.

I don't think this mechanism will discourage players from making innovative requests. I have played an online game once and its players suggested numerous extension requests, so much so that a group of moderators had to be enlisted to share the workload of screening the requests before submitting to the development team. But even with this mechanism in place, there still were numerous extension requests.

We really need to do something to reduce Prissi's workload : as far as I know, he has been working all by himself on the network mode. We should leave him with more time on coding and on his own private life.

Re: How to deal with people who actually want another game ...

Reply #9 –
Well, Simutrans was a 1.5 man show for the last four years, and it just gets better, with gerw and Dwachs more steadily working on the code (and can even submit). My request to someone also give a little work to pak64 (like shortening diagonal view of vehciles, fix errors, do rome tweaking) and so on were generally unsuccessful, so I just do the absolute necessary maintenance. Translator needs also a lot of attention; luckily FrankP looks after it mostly.

Website finally is better than it ever was, so that works.

And I read the forum only seldomly and only answer to extension request I feel that they deserve an answer. This is not most of my lacking time, this are rather different reasons at the moment. Furthermore, I always ignored most requests most of the time, so I will not very likely implement any of the anyway soon.

On coding issues: The real problem is the lack of working with everything, and coordination. THis can be done only be one person, and my time is getting sp****r at the moment and will not increase fundamentally until next or next next year. As much as I like to see the tryout of SimEx as much I see that the time spend there is missing for simutrans standard. But this is always the problem with forking and only time will tell who will survive in the end ...

Re: How to deal with people who actually want another game ...

Reply #10 –
Quote
Create a DevTeam and a place where they all can discuss and organize the works (like in old forum), and Prissi make known his thoughts and goals for Simutrans and the way how things should work out. I think he could transfer some powers to reliable people; Prissi would be the moderator and manager of this group, obviously.
Developing is sometimes a thankless task. You spend your own time working away to improve something for people to only come back and say it's not good enough. Sure the majority of people are grateful for the effort but it just takes one or two to make you think why do I bother? Also problem comes when you end up developing rather than playing the game - you lose touch with the actual gameplay...

Re: How to deal with people who actually want another game ...

Reply #11 –
Quote from: kierongreen – on
Also problem comes when you end up developing rather than playing the game - you lose touch with the actual gameplay...
yes - and I reached this state, since spare time is limited anyway :/
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and maggikraut.

Re: How to deal with people who actually want another game ...

Reply #12 –
Quote from: jamespetts – on
One should be careful about being too defensive of extension requests, even from new users: doing so might well make such people, who are no doubt perfectly sincere in posting their requests, disinclined to participate further in the community.

Sorry for the long time till my last posting.

For a long while I answered most extension requests with a "maybe later" and it seemed fine, just the list of request grew to overwhelming size. At some point I felt the need to decline some points, which made some people pretty angry and they started to argue even more heftily.

It definitely is a difficult task, once to stay friendly and be recognized as a friendly person, still be firm in declining some points. I still have not found out how to do this, but I recognize a "no" at the right time as self defense that is needed, even at the expense of being less liked by some persons - otherwise someone becomes their slave effectively, and this is unhealthy.

But it seems the problem that I sketched initially is not an issue for most people involved in Simutrans, so it's most likely not a problem at all. Thanks for all the responses and opinions, though :)