A suggestion: The community ambassador project

General Discussion
1

i want to suggest something ive been thinking for a while that i think would greatly improve the quality of the feedback that the devs recieve,

first up:

i want to explain the problem,

the forums are a place with very conflicting feedback, people all over the world with lots of different intentions come to the forums to suggest (or demand in some cases…) their ideas, however the problem becomes that A lot of this feedback is not geniune

What do i mean by Not Geniune?.

Well…simply put threads like “Delete X”, “Nerf X to the ground”, etc is not good feedback say what you want about what these thread types mean (or if they mean anything at all) but the Code Of Conduct clearly demands Constructivism, and out right asking for a character´s deletion does not seem very constructive to me.

now for the followup

The inspiration

We have known for a while that the developers have a discord with pros/streamers/youtubers in which they have a very direct line of communication,

and while i often disagree with what those people have to say, i do admire this idea and wish it could be expanded further, to the community itself,

now the problem here is, The community is made by millions of people imagine inviting all of them into a discord?

it would be a mess! it would be so many people shouting so much stuff that the developers wouldnt be able to read and we are going back to the same problem we got before

what this place would need is a filter

and for that i suggest my main idea

Community Ambassadors

The idea for this Community Ambassadors (CAs for short) is to act as a form of filter, the job of CAs is to browse the content, talk to people, do polls, and suggest their own ideas even to the developers,

They will try to represent the community, as well as their own ideas,

Now, before you say anything, the idea is that CAs are picked From the community and not from blizzard itself, There is nobody better to tell you what the community thinks than the community itself, something no blizzard employee, Pro, streamer or youtuber can do because each person is part of their own micro-enviroment and will see things differently,

In short a CA:

  • Represents the community
  • is a voluntary position (blizz does Not pay them)
  • They Do NOT represent blizzard, they only represent themselves and other community members

now, what we need to discuss is…how do we pick them?

personally, i think the ideal situation would be blizzard picking outstanding community members known for their constructivism and invite them to the proyect, and if they accept they can be invited to a similar discord (i wouldnt suggest to use the same one as the Dev/Discord because im sure that the devs have things in there they dont want us to see between pros and others, and plus i dont think that we would get along too well) so they may have a direct line with the devs,

for sure i can see a few problems with this. one of them beeing…what if the CA is extremely biased and gives conflicting feedback to the developers to manipulate them and get them to do what they want? we dont want that,

i do think that problem would be solved simply by having a good selection process, and enough of them so that if one is out of line, the rest can call them out.

the idea is that CAs will be totally normal forum members with this additive, they can still talk to other forum peers, discuss, do forum posts, etc and are still subject to the same rules.

Now, for who i would suggest to invite to this program…hmm…well. id personally love to be in it myself but it doesnt have to be (because lets be honest none of you thought i wouldnt want to be since i made the idea, ofc id like to be in!, lets be honest here)

maybe someone like grayfalcon…or MVPs like wyoming? (although they are more into the OWL stuff than game) i also talked to other uses privately like Ryan and SoCrates that i think could fit in too

its really hard to think right now (i have a terrible memory, there are probably a lot of people) someone i talked to lately about the idea was SoCrates and they said they would be intrested in joining so maybe him too

and keep in mind that this idea was mostly thought for the forums but this could easily be extended into reddit and other communities as well, however i would suggest that the CAs are picked from their local community and not brought in between them.

yes this is the thread i failed to post before (for those who saw it lol)

another option is to just have these “CAs” inestead of representing just be people who give good feedbak that diserves to be highlighted and they can be sent more to the devs more directly, kind of like dysvalence here said:

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2

As your ambassador, know that I will keep you, the little people, in mind as I sip my champagne and gorge upon caviar.

I’m not sure that an “ambassador” would be practical, and that a stratified system of “membership” would be beneficial. I think that we just might have to remain an unruly mob.

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3

NO

twenty characters

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4

I like the idea and I have a few follow-up questions.

For one thing, how many CAs would there be in total? Would there be a limit to how many people are allowed to be CAs at once, if so would you have to kick someone to make way for another and if not wouldn’t there eventually be too many? Also, I know it would be impossible to get anybody free of bias, but there should be something in place where a CA has to get some people to support their idea before they can say anything to the devs

5

im not sure, however many we feel like we need?

i think its better than what we have here right now, to be honest,

everyone has a very direct line of communication with the devs except for the general mob of people, we talk stuff but we never get to hear the response

like what if i suggest X, and a dev is like we cant do X because Y, then i can modify X and present Z

that in and out is something we dont really have right now

yeah it would, we are all bias, the idea is to have people who can try to think outside of that

as for support, well, maybe the forums themselves?

the idea is mostly that they run polls and stuff for the community to get an idea on stuff first,

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6

I wish we had these; the forums might actually be a place worth visiting. That way we don’t have 200 “DPS baD givE me LiKEs!!!” or “sUPport maINS ruin everyTHING!!!” type of posts that ruin this platform.

7

I will be happy to take up the position of ambassador.

I am widely recognized as fair, skillful and remarkably charismatic.

However, failing me, I suggest somebody with a background in development such as RobotWizard - or DanGotHeals, ambassador for us oppressed Damage players.

8

It seems more likely that no consensus will be reached on what X is. I understand this idea of promoting “the voice of the people”, but “the people” don’t agree on much of anything, and certainly not enough to reach enough of a consensus to articulate a position.

Now, if the goal is just that you want to go and party with the devs in Burbank, then go for it; more power to you. But it doesn’t seem like having a forum liaison would be of any more practical use than the current arrangement.

9

Nah the idea is to try to get a more consise argument rather than 50 people shouting 50different ideas, if people dont agree, CAs can present that there is a huge division among the community and try to present what each side has to say to give the developers a greater view of the matter

10

I assumed that WyomingMist has been doing this all along. Isn’t he the Community Manager? I’ve been to other official game forums where the person with that title had that duty.

However, if we are electing “normal people” to represent us then I’ve seen an example of that in a similar game and it’s going horribly. Paladins has the Assembly of Champions which is a group of non-affiliated gamers who act as representatives of the playerbase. The intention was as optimistic as your post but really they just do what OWL players/management and content creators do now, influence balance to meet their own personal goals.

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11

But as I said in the paragraph above what you quoted, there doesn’t seem to be a possible concise argument, at least until you make your first visit and everyone who was not in favor of what position you advocated starts saying things like “Magy only cares about the XYZ mains” and “Magy is just in Blizzard’s pockets and doesn’t care about the community”. That’s where this invariably goes.

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hopefully not, thats why i said it should be a careful selection process

i mean…this kind of happens already when the developers talk so…i dont see a difference XD

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The difference is that it is happening to you. But aside from this, there is no difference in terms of the status quo here. You’ve still got the cacophony of voices, there is no real consensus and people are still unhappy. But a few of you get a tour and drinks with the devs.

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Really, the only person who should be the ambassador should be Wyoming. They’re unbiased, friendly, and literally post every update/League update. Or any other forum MVP.

If not him, I’d suggest you. You’re nice and always understanding imo.

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the idea isnt that,

waht i have in mind is something like running polls on stuff like,

lets give an proper example, you mentioned me so ill put me as the example

the current experimental changes,

lets say i make a google forms poll about what people think of each change then post it in there, and after lets say a week or two i sent it to the devs and be like “here is what people think about it”

the argument could always be "but the poll is biased!" thats why i mentioned having multiple communities, reddit, discords, forums, etc

so lets say we each make our own poll, or one combined, and send it then we give that,

thats what i have in mind i dont see how that goal could be bad

sure it could go south and i could just fake a poll telling that everyone wants widow nerfed, but thats not what i have in mind really,

i dont think it can go worse than what we have now anyways

hence why i said:

but we have like 2 MVPs, and one is mostly a tech support, so yeah…

16

Yeah, I read that lol… I was agreeing with you :confused:

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oh okay, it came out differently to me i guess sorry

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18

oh also, i forgot to respond to this,

nope, i dont think wyoming does that

they were given to it mostly for the OWL stuff i think or tech support

19

A CA isn’t exactly immune to that. I really don’t think it’d be any better than the people already in the discord. Partially because going through all the bad threads is mindnumbing when it’s not even worth representing 90% of the time, and partially because the people I trust to effectively convey an opinion are those who have proven it, and that requires already having strong views on the game. I can’t expect anyone to neutrally represent opposing ideas with the same effort.

I’d rather shed any notion that the person in question is a representative in any way, and just pick people who have constructive and well presented feedback and ideas that are likely to actually help the devs improve the game.

20

This is a great idea, I don’t see why it shouldn’t happen