So your problems are:
- Can’t configure edit access place-by-place, asset-by-asset
- Can’t share animations
- Develop page/Inventory are a mess because there is no structure to them
Your use cases would all be resolved by shared group assets, but it’s the wrong tool for the job. Your suggestion identifies fundamental problems with these features, and if we don’t tackle the root problems in favor of one specific use case, other users still experience problems.
Access Privileges:
Scenario: We implement shared assets so developers can use multiple groups to control who gets edit access to which projects
Result: Developers are able to successfully control who gets edit access to which projects, but developers have to give up multiple group slots for a single development group. This does not properly restrict users either, as a clothing maker could change the prices of your gamepasses since they have asset edit permissions. There are also potential problems with removing membership/changing permission for a user in some groups, but forgetting to change them in all the subgroups.
True Solution: Proper access privilege permissions for groups. This addresses your use case of restricting access and the problems shared assets don’t solve. We might also look into a push/pull system where changes are manually approved by those with appropriate permissions to prevent users from nuking your game easily.
Sharing Animations:
Scenario: We implement shared assets so developers can share animations across multiple groups.
Result: Developers can successfully share animations between groups, but cannot for games uploaded to a user’s profile, and the owner of the animation can update it at any point to maliciously impact your game.
True Solutions: 1) Allow animations to be shared like other assets, 2) Allow groups to take assets, 3) Update inventory system so 3rd-party models have to be manually updated by group admin with appropriate permissions.
Develop Page Structure:
Scenario: We implement shared assets so developers can use multiple groups to organize their assets for projects.
Result: Developers are able to successfully organize their assets for projects, but either the test group ends up having assets for every game you make, defeating the purpose, or you create a new test group for every project and waste a tremendous amount of group space. This also does not alleviate the problem for single games with tremendous amounts of assets.
True Solution: A quality-of-life update for the Develop page, which may/may not be included when it’s overhauled. This includes: ability to archive assets so they don’t show up in Develop, ability to search through assets, and potentially the ability to tie assets to projects so it’s easy to find assets you’re looking for.
In conclusion, your use cases are certainly real and important, but we’d probably tackle them in a different way that addresses the root cause so that the benefits extend to more users and we don’t leave other problems lying around.