For more than one year have i been an active member on the Star Trek Online forum, and personally i have seen a lot of ideas and suggestions made by my fellow STO players that weren't quite ignored by dstahl and other devs.. these ideas were simply never noticed. Imagine if the original mini-game thread got quickly buried in the third, fourth of fifth page without any of the devs ever having the time to notice it!? This example alone shows how there were some great ideas that went right down to the forum limbo.
But, i cannot complain about anyone in Cryptic's staff. These guys do read a lot on the forums, and do spot a lot of the ideas (even though they naturally dismiss some, hehe). And that alone is more than any other MMO company i'd dare to say.
I also cannot suggest that each time someone has a good idea that they should PM it to dstahl, or any of the other devs.
So what you guys (devs) think of either hiring someone, or picking someone from the forum userbase to act as a Scout of sorts, whose sole role would be to read and re-read and re-re-read the forums, find the good and well-thought ideas many of us have and bring them to the attention of the responsible staff member? (General game-mechanic change ideas to dstahl, ship model change ideas to capn logan, GUI change ideas to the GUI guy (sorry, forgot your name, hehehe..) and etc).
Of course that choosing such people wouldn't be a easy task.. it would have to be someone with some knowlodge about the game mechanics who would know if something would or wouldnt be possible (Like an idea which involves being both at space and ground at the same time... game engine can't do that) and someone with enough maturity to be able to differ a well-thought idea from a possibly game-breaking idea (unless it's an well-thought game breaking idea, hehe, in which case a discussion is in order), and someone who would obviously be able to properly state a case and write an inteligible report.
So what you guys (devs specially) think about that? I can think of a few people from the top of my mind who would qualify (Wouldnt say me though.. i'm not that arrogant

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Comments
There is way more TRIBBLE suggested than cream. It is how forums work, TRIBBLE sinks, cream tends to float on top.
This is an excellent idea, and could never go wrong.
To be honest i'm also saying this from personal experience. Recently i have dedicated some time thinking about something which i then posted here. Granted, i just posted this one hour ago, however i might as well have posted some ideas that went into page 12 or page 13 of a thread that had a dev post in page 2 (or no dev post at all) in another thread, something that was different than what the OP posted but not different enough to warrant its own topic. Some people praised for a page or two, then there was some off-topic posts and the thread died.
This is an example.. it may have happened with me, with someone else.. but just because there wasn't 40 pages of response to that specific idea it doesn't mean it's a bad one.
And that's the point, basically.. There are some quite good ideas that don't get 40 pages. Not because they are bad, but maybe because not a lot of people were posting that day before it got buried, and things like that..
And yes, i do think that there are people in here who would fit the role. Like the guys who Cryptic picked to help in tech support.
I know i wouldn't be a very good scout, since i'm not here every day and i have a short attention span with my own ideas and tastes
EDIT: Oh yeah, i forgot about Stormshade. But then again, Stormshade is just one person, and also a forum moderator...
But if I remember correctly, Storm or someone else from the Dev Team said that they do try to look at every thread and take notes. So hopfully that some of those ideas were recorded and saved for later on for either consideration or implementation.
i'll pass on how you all want a undine player faction.
Yes and now is not the time to start noticing ideas. Many,many forum members in the past had awesome ides.
The Fed Carrier had several posts about it a year ago, before the announcement of a Klingon one.
Drivable Fleet Starbases
It has mostly been talked about over and over, and just to bring up current threads is ignoring the old ideas that have alot of merit.
Stormy and Arwen are and were doing fine and everything is put on the table in front of the devs for consideration. Some are put on hold, shelved, go into file 13, and some implemented, but they do not show their hand most of the time.
It was about 1 week prior to launch on an idea about miniskirts (that was brought up about 6 months prior to launch) was announced, so even if the wheels of progress seem slow, it is not necessarily broken.
Although, I'm all for a wiki having an organized list of suggestions.
For some reason, your response made me think of this.
I've always really liked the way Playstation handles their feature requests; a digg-style ticket system that lets users rank the feature and then keeps track of which ideas were implemented and when.
Playstation Blog Share
would't this thread would be enough to hold any ideas within?
my Thread:
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=187906
I'm also not technically a moderator. It's true that I do have moderation powers, and it's true that if I see something which breaks the rules, I'll take care of it myself. However, this doesn't mean that I actually moderate the forums as my primary role.
My Primary role here is to act as the "Forum Secretary" you've described. I take your feedback, and your ideas, regarding Star Trek Online back to the Development Team, and then I also get to share some cool and exciting news with you as well.
The forum moderators (Tiyshen and InfoNinja; occasionally GMDestra) work with me to send along feedback that they gather while reading the forums to me as well. This ensures a large amount of coverage just from the Community Team.
That said, we're still not perfect. Q knows somewhere in the depths of the forums resides the mother of all ideas, the proverbial "Golden Egg" as it were. Q also knows that as awesome as that idea is, it will probably have just as many people who love it that hate it.
However If you think someone has posted an awesome idea, the absolute best thing you can do is to support it by replying to the thread, and sharing your support for the idea.
The more posts a thread has in it, the more attention it will get from us.
I also promise, I send the entire team a veritable novel of ideas and feedback from you all on a very regular basis. This helps to act as confirmation to Devs that are active on the forums, that they're on the same page as you, and helps keep Devs that aren't as active on the forums in touch with you as well.
Thanks,
Stormshade
Hmm, havent thought about a wiki.
To be honest, it is a far better idea, and i'd start working on it myself if i knew how to put something like this up
If what you're proposing is a player made and run wiki of ideas and suggestions, then i'm pretty sure some people in here would jump right on it, myself included.
Some other games have something like this. Don't know if i'm supposed to name the game i have in mind, so i wont.
Basically it's a wiki page with different categories (Open suggestions, visited suggestions, most voted suggestions, etc), and all issues are organized in an alphabetical manner. This page is organized with ideas gathered by some players from a suggestions forum (players with a specific title given by the company of the game in question, something like what i suggested).
I'd love to link this page here, since i think it would do wonders for you guys and STO in general.. but like i said, don't know if i can
EDIT: Oh, just saw storm post above mine, hehe
I really forgot about you when i raised the question storm, sorry about that
But i really liked dstahl's suggestion of a wiki page for said ideas. It could be neatly organized both by alphabetical order AND +1 or -1 votes, in the case a voting system should be in place.
Said suggestions could then be their own articles in the wiki, and also make a reference link to the discussion thread.
exactly, that's what i was thinking