Network Leadership required Dev Team Moneypots [Multi-server]

[Kevin Ki]

What does this suggestion change/add/remove:
[This suggestion would introduce a 'Moneypot' system of donations to the dev team of all of Civil Networks, that being a list of items on the dev to-do list that Civil Networks community members can choose to donate to, to add a cash reward/bounty to the project for devs to aim for.]

Has something similar been suggested before? If so, why is your suggestion different?:
[As far as I am aware no.]

Possible Positives of the suggestion (At least 2):
[I will list the positives in a bullet point way to allow community/staff to reply to it in an easier to digest manner:

1. Developer rewards/Pay: As of right now, the devs of CN gain very little to no reward for the work done. As of now the only gain is getting top tier VIP for both MRP and SCP-RP, which as a player of CN for nearly 2 years now, I know people tend to only play one or the other, not both. This would be a better reward.

2. Incentives to do community favorites: This would give the community a way to "Chum the waters" so to speak for devs to make the content they most desire in a way much more peaceful than just saying "[Thing] when!?!?" over and over.

3. Incentives for developers to do hard work: This I believe would incentivize devs to do even harder work for the server with the promise of monetary gain, that being winning the moneypot, especially when they get into the hundreds of GBP for something some devs, may know how to do easily.

4. Developer retention: As of right now, most devs tend to move on from CN because they want to "Go pro" or because the work isn't worth the reward, this would allow for people who do want to make a carrier out of developing to do so right here on CN if they're good enough, and give incentive to stay with this community.

5. Saves/Gives Ventz money: We all know, money talks. With this new way of community engagement, I believe Ventz himself could see his own increase in profits, and incentive to do certain things for developing so he can just take the full pot himself, as well as pays devs without his own pocket.

I believe there is certainly more gains than I listed here, and hope these will be enough to be considered.]

Possible Negatives of the suggestion:
[1. Finding a gain for community using this that is immediate: The only solution to this I thought of was giving Vpoints but only 75%-90% of the normal amount, this wouldn't cost Ventz anything really as Vpoint are an unlimited available currency to give out.

2. Less desired work getting the backburner: I don't think this is too much of a negative, but if the community doesn't want something it could see a smaller honey pot than others.

3. Figuring out when devs can earn it: Who can get the money pots? Any dev or only full devs? I don't know.]

Based on the Positives & Negatives, why should this suggestion be accepted:
[I think that with all the positives and negatives, we will definitely see a better community and leadership understanding and what people really want added sooner with this added, I think it will attract both devs experienced and inexperienced and retain them, leading to quicker growth. I think devs will be more driven to work and make better and better mods and additions leading to more content and more fixes quicker than we see now.

I am excited to see what others think on this idea and hope we can have a helpful and creative discussion on this idea, and hopefully make CN a bigger and better place!]

 

[Douglas]

+support

 

[Johnson J. Marauder]

+Support
@Herr Kvarkar can spend it all on alcohol!


CI-C COM
Omega-1 CPL
Ex-Alpha-1 CSG

 

[KingViper115]

+Support​

this is needed for more Quality content updates!​

 

[L.Saint]

Huge +SUPPORT I would donate

 

[Broda]

Its a cool idea but what happens when there are your typical whales who'd splash cash on anything to suit their playstyle? I think its a genuine cause for concern as the last thing you'd want is a tiny fraction of paying members to dictate what content gets worked on and what doesn't.

I think CN has immense potential for growth and in doing so you'd get more Metro's hired on causing more content to get developed. But I get the catch 22 scenario here, can't grow if the devs have little incentive.

I think at face value you have a great idea here but I foresee it being hijacked to the detriment of the community. Perhaps NL/Yeke/Ventz etc need to be much much harsher on content team approvals to filter this issue out.

 

[Emilia Foddg]

To contribute further to the talking points here; How do you envision this working with partially developed features, between multiple different developers?

Conventional wisdom states that you'd split the reward between all contributors based on their contributions, but there are a few situations where it gets kinda weird?

A very common scenario could be that a dev would take on a ticket with a bounty, contribute a significant amount of feature completion towards it, but not fully for whatever reason (Generally, things are not done in one go unless they are very very small and have little-to-no issues in the development process, so there are a plethora of reasons why this could be), another dev self-assigns and either completes the feature, or progresses development some more (After which, repeat with more and more devs ending up working on the issue until complete or the feature just gets stuck in development hell, whether due to complications, balance concerns? or the difficulty of implementing the feature proving to be more Sisyphean than initially anticipated).

When thinking about the actual practicality of doing this, aside from what Broda mentioned above with the whole prospect of wealthy players driving the development of the servers to the potential detriment of the community, even in hypotheticals, you start to notice potential office politics issues such as "Dev X wrote this much of the codebase for this feature and its functionality, but they found the at-the-time missing features too trying to implement, then Dev Y came in and was able to implement them. How do we split the reward up between Dev X, who built most of the thing and Dev Y who built the hardest part?" as well as concerns with similar things, like unintentional deincentivisation by virtue of not wanting to complete the remainder of a feature because it might be perceived as not be worth the effort (I can't imagine the resultant system would be proportional reward to pure amount of contribution for this very reason, but let's say Dev X develops something 90% of the way, if people think they're only going to get 10% of the reward, why bother?) and... I mean, I don't say this to be accusatory, but it's something we need to be mindful of: Which would be the possibility of a bad actor trying to manipulate the system for their own benefit - E.g. Devs X, Y and Z are working on a ticket. After completion, it turns out that it could have been completed faster/better with the involvement of Dev A, but Devs X, Y & Z were being obstructive to Dev A so that they could reap more of the reward.

And more - So what you have is NL having to devote their attention to managing this whole affair, ensuring developers get the appropriate compensation and are treated fairly while being properly incentivised by the system.

I might just be paranoid about this, I guess? But even if the chances of these situations coming to pass are low, that chance generally only goes up as time passes with something like this active. I'm aware that monetary bounties have been put on development features in the past, but I think it's different in the case where the community can freely incentivise the development of specific things - I feel like with this in place, it becomes less of an uncommon thing and... I want to say more expected? That doesn't feel right, but I hope you get what I mean when I say this; It's a complex matter of control, abundance, expectations, fair treatment, etc. I think with all things considered, a significant opening for abuse crops up.

Forget what I said before, I think this is the biggest potential drawback to this idea.

 

[Harry]

To contribute further to the talking points here; How do you envision this working with partially developed features, between multiple different developers?

Conventional wisdom states that you'd split the reward between all contributors based on their contributions, but there are a few situations where it gets kinda weird?

Hello, just to clarify this already happens within the dev team with the current bounty system. The devs must agree on the split of the bounty each before they begin work on it, once the prices and work has been agreed upon it then begins working. Devs can also request to involve other developers within their bounties if they wish.

Pretty much, most of it already happens and we just are mature about it and organise it between ourselves (normally it ends up in a 50/50 split if it’s a roughly equivalent amount of work)

 

[Zakariya]

+support

 

[Emilia Foddg]

Hello, just to clarify this already happens within the dev team with the current bounty system. The devs must agree on the split of the bounty each before they begin work on it, once the prices and work has been agreed upon it then begins working. Devs can also request to involve other developers within their bounties if they wish.

Pretty much, most of it already happens and we just are mature about it and organise it between ourselves (normally it ends up in a 50/50 split if it’s a roughly equivalent amount of work)

Alright, so I'm just talking nonsense then and that is a solved problem. Thank you.

 

[Kevin Ki]

Its a cool idea but what happens when there are your typical whales who'd splash cash on anything to suit their playstyle? I think its a genuine cause for concern as the last thing you'd want is a tiny fraction of paying members to dictate what content gets worked on and what doesn't.

Very good point. But easily fixed like a normal "crowdfunded" system would.

When items are deemed 'Next in line' for the dev team (from my understanding they get a list of things to pick from to work on in their sectors) they will claim them, and it will then be donatable to.

Example:
[New chemical mixing minigame <256 GBP>]
[New Guns <142 GBP>]
[New models for (group) <325 GBP>]
[New map addition (blank) <652 GBP>]
[ETC]
[[Rough simple examples, real examples will be detailed and have descriptions or whatever ventz and yeke decide]]

From this screen, the donor, will then be able to click the item they want their donation to fund. This won't have a full list of all things on the dev tracker (or it could, the overall suggestion is for the idea not the direct play by play), it'll have things those in the positions deem important to next be added next.

This system could ALSO see Devs that do good work to get more praise from the community.

Let's say @Harry gets donations to make a map addition. New buildings, new rooms, etc. Then good ol @Harry does INSANELY good work, he makes a entire building based a hotel and it could rival a 5 star hotel irl, and adds so much more to the server. Players LOVE it. So when they're donating and they see @Harry is working on another map addition, knowing the amazing work he puts in they then donate to the thing he's working on to encourage him to do it. They feel MORE inclined to donate to see more of what he can do. So now he's getting more money, players are appreciative of his work, and he gets more inclination to do more for the server, and feels more inclined to stick with the server and learn more about the system he's working with.