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Will We Ever Get a Dedicated Suggestions Section?
hiddenfate
Banned Users Posts: 0 Arc User
I've been having the usual arguments with the voices recently about whether developers read player suggestions in the forums. One of the voices brought up the point that maybe the developers would like to read our suggestions but they can't because suggestions have to be made in gameplay, general discussion, or class forums and are usually taken from page 1 to page 50 within a few days by a bunch of other threads and posts. Also apparently moved threads and locked threads push regular threads in the forum to the back of the line too.
Will we ever get a dedicated suggestions section to remedy this problem? Or at the very least will the forum ever be updated so that I don't see 10 moved threads on page 1 of gameplay discussion again, pushing half the regular posts to page 2 and 3?
Will we ever get a dedicated suggestions section to remedy this problem? Or at the very least will the forum ever be updated so that I don't see 10 moved threads on page 1 of gameplay discussion again, pushing half the regular posts to page 2 and 3?
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You don't need a "Suggestion" title to be a suggestion.
True but that means suggestions get mixed with feedback and random threads.
My YouTube Channel
A Comprehensive Review of Neverwinter <-- Read it!
No back & forth, no flaming or hate. Noone else posts in thread.
Just post your idea and let the Devs and whatknot look at your idea and if they think it is interesting
or worth looking into they can send ya a PM or something.
There are no suggestions which aren't born from feedback.
And the discussions and back and forth are crucial. The discussions, more than the feedback, direct the changes of the game because it's those discussions which show the altering view points of players and the pros and cons to every suggestion.
Just hate all the flaming and HAMSTER that comes from anyone posting an idea or suggestion.
Always seems to be someone who just goes ballistic about it.
But I definitely see your point.
And then when we remove the flame responses people get upset how we don't let them express their opinions. *shrugs and smiles*
If you see a flame post report it. We'll edit it to be more respectful, send it to the depths or remove it outright. We've been cracking down on it a lot recently to get the point across.
Flaming people for differing views will not be tolerated.
Be respectful or don't post.
in my opinion, having the expectation for this or any company to acknowledge every single suggestion given is a bit unrealistic. even if they acknowledged that they've read it, there's still no guarantee that they're going to consider it or implement it. plus, it would be more realistic to assume that a lot of the ideas that are provided in the forums have already been thought of or suggested within the company.
Suggestions posted in the General subforums just get lost quickly I cannot imagine a busy dev going through pages of topics or specifically searching the forums for "Suggestion" topics.
Centralization of data makes it easier to process.
But the notion of a "Suggestion Forum" is just unnecessary. There is no difference between feedback and a suggestion. Any good feedback should include at least some sort of indication of what could improve the situation.
A "Suggestion" forum would basically translate every thread from general to the new section leaving general a ghost town.
And on that notion a different issue causes a lot of the other problems altogether, stop posting threads in general just because it has more traffic.
I kind of have to agree with them. You do make the community a more positive place, but I've seen plenty of posts or threads that are slightly heated, or that moderators think MAY be heated have action against and so people can't express their own concerns. Of course you're always unfortunately going to get people who take it too far, but personally I feel that this isn't really a place that you can discuss concerns about the game unless you're really careful about it.
I don't think most people give it that much thought. I didn't. I have one view that I use.. I get to it from a tool-bar shortcut called 'New Posts."
I use new posts, and occasionally search, so I posted the only post I ever made in General. Sorry!
Roland Mac Sheonin GF | Tarron Direheart SW |
Okay you got me there, but most of those suggestions require a lot of reading between the lines and hoping you're reading correctly (which means nobody gets to play the reading glasses prank!). With a suggestions forum that encourages just suggestions and opinions/feedback regarding those specifically you'd have a lot more organized information in one easy to find place. No more worrying about if you're reading between the lines right.
I'd accept this as an alternative, but I'd only be about 65% satisfied with it. And only if it was a choice between this and no change at all. It's a step forward.
In business the first thing you learn is that having a lot of third-party go betweens is costly and can cause a lot of communication issues between you and your clients. While I don't think the costly part applies here it can create a lot of holes. People forget, and a post that was bogged down the day after your last meeting (that you thought was really cool) will be forgotten by the next meeting.
With the introduction of a new suggestion section you could avoid the human error issue easily. Players make suggestions in a section that is less clicks away than sending a private message to the community manager and the developers can learn what their players are suggesting more easily (I'll discuss a way to make it even easier on them later on in this reply).
If you want to take it further, a community manager could keep a list of new concepts that have been suggested and if repeats start appearing, they merge the posts together and beat the repeater with a stick (or just tell em to read the sticky before doing it again but the former is good stress relief). Or a player could keep a list, but we don't get to use sticks. This would remove the clutter problem which plague the rest of the forums.
Stop tempting me to say mean things...
That aside, while I don't think it's viable for a company to acknowledge every suggestion the fact is that the developers don't acknowledge that they've read any of them. I haven't seen a post by developers outside of the announcements and preview shard (excluding the lord of our community in the form of a hamster) in the months I've played this game. Out of curiosity when I realized this fact I scrolled back about 30 pages on each forum or until I didn't recognize a single post or name, still nothing. Seriously, even a "good suggestion, we'll consider it" would go a long way at this point. Unless it's on this thread because I called it.
If this were true, which I can't attest to because sharing concept design would be a huge waste of time, then the suggestions forum would help all the more. If the developers think up a concept (or wish to go back to a concept they already discussed) they can visit the good old suggestions forum and easily check player opinions regarding it... because they're all right there.
As promised in an earlier reply to a quote I will mention how suggestion threads in general can be improved (whether another section is made or not). This is more of a comment towards all posters on this forum than to any manager or developer though.
Suggestions need to follow a format designed to get number data instead of read-between-the-lines-with-foggy-glasses-and-monotone data. In other words when you make a suggestion always create a poll for it with the following options: Like, Dislike, Like with Qualifications (explain in a post), No Opinion. This way managers and developers will both be able to easily tell how many people voted in your suggestion, how many liked it, and how many hated it (and how many liked it but want to make a change or additional suggestion).
Furthermore suggestion threads should be single issue (with a poll) to make it easier to quantify opinions. If you're making a PvP suggestion thread for King of the Hill, Capture the Flag, and Team Deathmatch (for example), make 3 separate threads each tackling a different mode. Stagger it out so you aren't spamming. What this does is give developers and managers proper statistical information. If it's a 3-topic post then they won't be able to tell whether people are voting "Like" because of CTF, KoTH, or TDM... it's just a number.
Also please keep this thread centered on the topic of a new suggestion thread
My YouTube Channel
A Comprehensive Review of Neverwinter <-- Read it!