How to make the Card Requests system "better"
Posted: 04 Apr 2016, 03:38
I propose that we find a way to have one master thread for Card Requests and to have it more easily maintainable and understandable to see what is going on. For instance, we do not currently have any functionality that determines how heavily requested certain cards are, or what are the last few cards needed to complete a given deck - both cases which we would give high priority to implementing. Before I go into a lot of detail, the main question is what suggestions do you have for creating a better Card Request system?
And now the details...
The current situation - we currently have two threads which have gradually lost their meaning for Card Requests. http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=14062 for Important Tournament Cards and http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=4554 for general Card Requests. At this point more than 99% of commonly played cards in competitive tournaments are implemented. For obvious reasons, those cards are the top-most priority to implement. However, people don't just use XMage for competitive testing - they also like to casually test brews, play some Pauper or EDH for example. At this point both threads are interpretted as the same - we don't put strict rules on what can be requested in each thread, so we look at both threads to see the requested cards and there is no strict priority we follow. We contribute to XMage in our free time and this is completely free, so none of us are paid for our efforts. We simply encourage developers to continue to improve XMage and for more people with some development background to join in and help however they can at their pace. What each person does and when is up to them. (Join us! See the Developer Getting Started guide here https://github.com/magefree/mage/wiki/Developer-Getting-Started and visit our Developer Talk forum http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=116 for more details)
Our current tool for trying to manage this:
A tool fewer people are familiar with is our Card Implementation Tracking Tool found here: http://ct-magefree.rhcloud.com/ . Every few weeks we go through the card requests threads and import the requested cards so they show up as Requested when selected in the drop down. If you set Implemented to "false" and Requested to "true" there is at least 478 results. There are no notes on how heavily requested certain cards are, what decks they fit into, or any way to group them meaningfully really. And the original developer who created that tool has been absent for some time now, so we cannot improve upon it by creating additional columns or anything of the sort, so we need to devise a new solution. (Thus the purpose of this thread!)
What to do?
What should we do to make a better Card Request system?
I am thinking we start with having a separate sticky thread that will serve as the "master" Card Request thread. No more going between two threads when they both are treated the same. This also would close out those existing threads. After that though, I'm not sure. We can try to create a tool that can only be managed by the developers, similar to what we have now. Or we can do an open Google Sheet with certain cells unlocked. Or... ? What do you think might work?
And now the details...
The current situation - we currently have two threads which have gradually lost their meaning for Card Requests. http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=14062 for Important Tournament Cards and http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=4554 for general Card Requests. At this point more than 99% of commonly played cards in competitive tournaments are implemented. For obvious reasons, those cards are the top-most priority to implement. However, people don't just use XMage for competitive testing - they also like to casually test brews, play some Pauper or EDH for example. At this point both threads are interpretted as the same - we don't put strict rules on what can be requested in each thread, so we look at both threads to see the requested cards and there is no strict priority we follow. We contribute to XMage in our free time and this is completely free, so none of us are paid for our efforts. We simply encourage developers to continue to improve XMage and for more people with some development background to join in and help however they can at their pace. What each person does and when is up to them. (Join us! See the Developer Getting Started guide here https://github.com/magefree/mage/wiki/Developer-Getting-Started and visit our Developer Talk forum http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=116 for more details)
Our current tool for trying to manage this:
A tool fewer people are familiar with is our Card Implementation Tracking Tool found here: http://ct-magefree.rhcloud.com/ . Every few weeks we go through the card requests threads and import the requested cards so they show up as Requested when selected in the drop down. If you set Implemented to "false" and Requested to "true" there is at least 478 results. There are no notes on how heavily requested certain cards are, what decks they fit into, or any way to group them meaningfully really. And the original developer who created that tool has been absent for some time now, so we cannot improve upon it by creating additional columns or anything of the sort, so we need to devise a new solution. (Thus the purpose of this thread!)
What to do?
What should we do to make a better Card Request system?
I am thinking we start with having a separate sticky thread that will serve as the "master" Card Request thread. No more going between two threads when they both are treated the same. This also would close out those existing threads. After that though, I'm not sure. We can try to create a tool that can only be managed by the developers, similar to what we have now. Or we can do an open Google Sheet with certain cells unlocked. Or... ? What do you think might work?