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The first session of the Gods Unchained Council of Mortals comes to a close and later this month we welcome new and returning members to the second session. It's a time to look eagerly ahead; I'm very curious to see the things this council will do!
But... not everyone is.
The most frequently asked, and left unanswered, question during the recent voting periods was "What did the first council even do?". Reddit gives us a glimpse but the question was asked far more often in Discord chats or during Twitch streams.
This poster has a lot of bias and most of the players who asked this same question were not so confrontational. What I find much much more concerning then this question being asked is that I never saw anyone get a solid, definitive answer to it.
Sometimes a single win from a council member would be recalled and stated but overall ::shrug:: nobody seemed to have any idea. Not even most of the other council members.
And here we come to the catch with all this council stuff...
Most of what the council accomplishes is going to be boring.
People don't remember boring, no matter how huge an impact it may have had on their ability to play and enjoy the game.
I knew the council had done many impactful things. Yet I found I lacked the specifics to state what they were. What I did have was a -surety- that when I thought of the council as having had lots of wins, even if I couldn't name them, it was because they -did- happen. I knew this question both had, and deserved, a better answer.
So I went hunting! Fortunately it was about the easiest hunt ever thanks to @agrante having spent many many hours, totally on his on initiative, to create written summaries of the CoM meetings. Without these easily reviewable and referenceable documents it would have been very tedious to answer our big question!
((A quick aside- I would like to strongly advise the second CoM to speak with Agrante and see if an agreement can be reached to have him provide this service going forward.))
I'm going to link those documents here for easy checking out. They are very informative reads in general and give a lot of insight on how big of an endeavor the council really is.
https://old.reddit.com/r/GodsUnchained/comments/wan3gv/1st_council_of_mortals_tldidnt_watch/
https://old.reddit.com/r/GodsUnchained/comments/wxkdcp/second_council_of_mortals_tldidnt_watch/
https://old.reddit.com/r/GodsUnchained/comments/xxe4xr/third_council_of_mortals_tldidnt_attend/
https://old.reddit.com/r/GodsUnchained/comments/yfmtdb/fourth_council_of_mortals_tldidnt_attend/
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Look at all these wins! Whoo!
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((okies all, slight shift in presentation- for this part I'm just going to drop in the write-up I posted in the @teamstreamteam discord cuz time saved re-writing it is time I can use to play Gods Unchained!))
✨ Win A- ✨
Matchmaking: CoMM#1- the council made this request "Request to change matchmaking to prevent playing against the same opponent multiple times in a row. Also request for some measure of control to avoid a player going second multiple times in a row, particularly in tournament settings."
CoMM#4: it was publicly announced that- "Matchmaking has been upgraded and back-to-back queuing into the same person shouldn't be possible anymore.". This improvement had gone live before the meeting but this is where consensus was given to show satisfaction with the concern's solution.
This improvement (which, gosh things used to be soooo bad, I'd forgotten) was followed up on by the council in between meetings #1 and #4 and it was likely that this public pressure on an actionable issue greatly increased how fast("fast") it was taken care of and possibly that it was taken care of at all.
The second part of the issue, going 2nd in tournaments, had a lot of resistance from GU and was not resolved likely due to GU's lack of a self-run Esports program meaning it was a "not our problem" concern. (Sewlie got our backs though!)
✨ Win B- ✨
Bug Bashing: Greatly improved ability for the community to assist with GU's efforts to resolve bugs by way of the community having an easy, convenient, organized and integrated(well, integrated into discord at least) place to report bugs. While bugs still abound they are most certainly less of a hinderance then they were before the recent-ish push to really tackle them.
The council pushed for various solutions to the bug problem and while most were not in GU's scope of interest(bug bounties, better in-UI reporting, etc.) the conversations around the team's then current methods to get player bug reports made it much more clear how inefficient those methods were(trello board, outdated buried webpages, broken in-match tool) and it was eventually agreed by GU that "A better platform for communication and transparency with the bugs is necessary - the team is currently testing out and improving the Discord bug threads."
And now we have the forums-style channels for both bugs and feedback where posts are often given direct responses from the devs, yays! The playerbase also got a lot of in-depth info on GU's internal processes that normally would not be shared with a bunch of random players and this is valuable info to have.
✨ Win C- ✨
Minted, tradable, shineable Welcome Cards! pushed for by @cautionfun
This is the easy one that was remembered by some people, no doubt because of how exciting it was to finally be able to use welcome cards with the whole GU ecosystem!
✨ Win D- ✨
This won't be counted as a win by most people but I consider it a highly valuable and necessary one- Each meeting there were improvements in how the meetings were run, how they were recorded, how time was allotted, how easy it was to continue talks outside the meetings and dozens of other small things.
It's been a rough process and tbh we're prolly only at about "high school government" levels of organization but considering this was something started with absolutely zero of a playbook to go off of and involves dozens of people from around the world who never even see each other for the most part, I think that as long as improvements continue a rough start won't matter in the long run.
✨ Win E- ✨
I don't have access to the records for these talks but reputable council members have publicly disclosed that the WW set was going to be way more like the LV train wreck except that GU asked the council for thoughts and eventually was persuaded to change some things before launching the set. GU using the council for advice like this shows it can have a -huge- impact when it's running well.
(btw: these aren't the only wins. Just the ones easiest to present)
✍️ 💪 ✍️ ✍️ 💪 ✍️ ✍️ 💪 ✍️ ✍️ 💪 ✍️ ✍️ 💪 ✍️
Phew!
The council has done plenty and there is proof.
I think even Temnys would be getting tired now so we'll stop there but that's the answer in short and for in detail, well, now you have a handy article to link peeps to!
I encourage people to discuss this topic here; maybe you'll even know of a win I didn't recall! Had you forgotten about any of these? What would you like to see from the next council?
-rckmtl-
Anyone who thinks CoM did nothing is clueless. We did the maximum we could given our (lack of) power, how people were invited, and how little was asked of us. The second CoM already has seen major improvements, from the way people were voted in (this time only people who care got on), to the fact that GU will be asking us more for direct feedback.
We have literally 0 power. Anyone who thinks we should've rolled out a mode, or fixed a bug, or changed the price of something doesn't understand what the CoM is.
All we can do is be in the ear of GU and tell them things they are doing are good or bad, and why. And they can choose to completely ignore 100% of that feedback (and they have done that already, and will continue to do it no doubt when it is in their interest). And they can also listen to our feedback if they want, and they have done that as well, to some degree.
This is a great reminder of all the things our CoM members accomplished. Half the battle was figuring out just what CoM was going to be, how it would operate, and keeping people from talking for 20 minutes before asking their questions! 😆
The new match-making algo is a huge win. It not only prevents facing the same opponent, but I've definitely noticed it looks for a variety of gods since the change. That keeps the game much fresher. It may be my imagination, but even when aggro war dominated the meta, I was still finding magic, nature, etc.
Happy to have both @copperpitch and @cautionfun (and others) on the CoM. These folks are invested in the game (time and money) and are good at it. I trust them more than I trust myself to have informed opinions and smart takes.
I also want to give credit to GU. I've never seen anything like CoM before, and I'm glad they are doing it.
Edit: oh and yea props to @agrante! Thank you!
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