How often do you visit the suggestion forum?

Raffoon

DayvBang wrote:

Raffoon wrote:

$$We read all your feedback!$$

Then why don't you acknowledge it or act on it?

I am not speaking for D3 or Demiurge.

They have a policy of not replying to things in Suggestions, but they definitely read them.

I can't tell you why this policy was chosen. I could venture a guess, but it would be reasoned conjecture at best.

One obvious aspect is that if they promise they are working on something, they will be inundated with threads asking why it isn't here yet.

I think the policy could be more nuanced, with some things warranting reply, but perhaps they're concerned that if they reply to some threads, those without replies will stick out like a sore thumb.

It's a sticky issue.

But here's the thing:

Whining about the forum organization isn't going to change it. There's been ample discussion of the Suggestions and Feedback forum, and moderators have discussed the concerns with D3 staff directly. The decision was made to keep the Suggestions and Feedback forum separate from General Discussion.

Yes, this upsets a very vocal minority. But you know what? That group knows where to finds the subforum. If they don't participate there, they only have themselves to blame.

Sure you don't get as many upvotes, pats on the back, and electronic high fives over there, but that really doesn't matter that much. Community support for an idea doesn't matter nearly as much as whether it is feasible, whether the devs think it fits the direction they want the game to go, whether it will earn money (or at least not decrease revenue), and the answer to the most important question of all: is this change important enough to stop work on something else?

With the level of control that some players wish to exert over the development of this game, I think they might be better off working in the open source gaming community. I know I'd love to see some development progress on Nethack again.

(Holy **** I just found out there's an updated Nethack release!)

The developers and community managers used to post in the forums all the time. Particularly, they would post in the General discussion section.

At some point they stopped doing that. Perhaps it's when MTGPQ development started up?

Now, if we get a red response about something once per month we're lucky.

Actually, come to think of it, the developers seemed to abandon the community right after the Thor/Xforce nerfs that invalidated hundreds of dollars people had spent.

Those were the days!!!! Remember when we used to be upset about HUNDREDS of our dollars becoming useless? Now people get to pour thousands of dollars into the game and all they get back is a giant middle finger.

Linkster79

simonsez wrote:

Jamie Madrox wrote:

It doesn't matter how much YOU read the suggestions and/or bugs forums. What does matter is how much the dev team does. From what I understand the answer to that question is "every day".

It's great that that's what your understanding is, but it'd be even greater if there was some actual evidence of this, like maybe a community manager who would respond to suggestions and bug reports more often than once in a blue moon. For instance, after every bugfix update turul reminds everyone about other bugs that have been around for months without being addressed or even acknowledged. Is it any wonder that people feel like posting in the suggestions and bugs forums is like a tree falling in an empty forest?

IceIX stated that there is a strict " no touching" policy in the suggestions section. I can understand why this is. As for bugs, well as much as I and many others would like to see administration feedback there, again I can understand why. They confirm whatever bugs there may be and next thing there are 101 posts and threads demanding them to be fixed. I am sure they have a priority list of in game bugs and get around to working on them whenever they get time. This priority list is I am sure different to what most of us users have (see 1* Venoms fun balance). Personally I do not feel they allocate enough time for thorough play testing and bug fixing but then what do I know?

In response to the OP I visit suggestion fairly often and post in there as well. Some ideas I post I feel are good and have seen at least one of my ideas implemented. Some suggestions I know would be very difficult and not cost effective but I post those too just to give the devs some idea of what I would like to see. They can't please everyone so I guess if enough users post the same suggestion and the development team like it too it may just get put in at some point, just possible not how you would expect.

TLCstormz

DaveR4470 wrote:

/rant on

To me, almost every suggestion seems to fall into this pattern:

(1) "Hey, you should totally dig out your entire basement and make a swimming pool out of it, and we could have parties there!"
(2) /waits one day
(3) "DUDE THERE'S NO SWIMMING POOL IN THE BASEMENT YOU DON'T LISTEN TO ME YOU ONLY LISTEN TO THE WHALES I'M RAGEQUITTING YOUR HOUSE"

With no in-between.

Chill.

/rant off

Uhm........many of the things that people complain about ( LIKE THE 20 ISO RIDICULOUSNESS ) have been around for more than two years now, correct? What an absurd analogy.

DayvBang wrote:

Sure you don't get as many upvotes, pats on the back, and electronic high fives over there, but that really doesn't matter that much. Community support for an idea doesn't matter nearly as much as whether it is feasible, whether the devs think it fits the direction they want the game to go, whether it will earn money (or at least not decrease revenue), and the answer to the most important question of all: is this change important enough to stop work on something else?

lol. You do not know ANY of that to be actual facts, do you?

Dayv

Pylgrim wrote:

Nice snide jab at my post instead of an actual reply. I don't want hi-fives or pats on the back; I want discussion and community participation regardless of who made the original post on a suggestion.

Nice job not reading my post, if you thought that wasn't an actual reply.

You want discussion and participation? You can get that right on over in Suggestions. Seriously, conversations happen there. Ideas are raised, alterations are suggested. Ideas develop through shared input.

Is it a smaller audience than general? Sure, but it's also a self-selected group of users specifically interested in improving the game.

This is a dead horse; stop beating it.

Pylgrim

DayvBang wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

Nice snide jab at my post instead of an actual reply. I don't want hi-fives or pats on the back; I want discussion and community participation regardless of who made the original post on a suggestion.

Nice job not reading my post, if you thought that wasn't an actual reply.

You want discussion and participation? You can get that right on over in Suggestions. Seriously, conversations happen there. Ideas are raised, alterations are suggested. Ideas develop through shared input.

Is it a smaller audience than general? Sure, but it's also a self-selected group of users specifically interested in improving the game.

This is a dead horse; stop beating it.

I just visited the suggestion subforum to find all these conversations and discussions. Maybe I was being unfair and in the last few months, the subforum had somehow blossomed into a veritable agora of discourse and collaboration. Lo and behold, the total amount of replies in the whole first page was 74, for an average of 3.7 replies per post. Many threads have 0 replies. Just as a comparison, the first non-stickied three threads in general discussion right now have 83 replies. This thread alone has 25, as of now.

My point is that you are fighting human nature. General discussion is the hub of the community and where people expect to be able to discuss the issues of the game and try to figure out a solution. If the suggestion subforum stance was enforced from the beginning, before people developed habits, maybe it'd have worked, but now it's too late.

I know, I know I could do my part and move all of my suggestions there and if we all did then we'd get a perfect, compartmentalised world that would bring tears of joy to the eyes of every mod. But you can bet it would always be a tiny minority the ones who'd comply. The great majority of people would continue to post them here and it would be us, the obedient little-two-shoes the one to look with envy at their suggestions being discussed and supported by the community, always wondering if our 3.7-reply suggestions carry any weight in the eyes of the developers. The lack of communication from red names in that subforum only serves to reinforce the negative feedback loop that will always make people come to general discussion in order to be heard.

I'm aware that by higher-up command, stubbornness, or a bit both, the current stance is never going to change so it is indeed a dead horse. Can't get angry, though, when we point out that it was your fault that the horse died, which is what this poll is proving.

Infrared

An effective way to stop or reduce discussion on a thread is to move it to move it to the suggestions forum, whether or not that is the intention. The positive side of it is that the devs are supposed to read everything in Suggestions, while they need not for General. Some users also find it convenient to search under the Suggestions forum to see if something has already been suggested before. So it is good as a kind of one sided ticket system, and as a searchable index, but not as a place for discussion.

How about leaving discussions about suggested features/changes in General, and only moving posts that have no discussion value? If we want to make sure the devs see it, put a link to it in the Suggestions but let the discussion continue in General.

Dayv

Infrared wrote:

How about leaving discussions about suggested features/changes in General, and only moving posts that have no discussion value? If we want to make sure the devs see it, put a link to it in the Suggestions but let the discussion continue in General.

How about no?

Raffoon

There's a thread on the first page of the suggestions forum currently that's been up for 8 days and has 48 views, with 0 responses.

But, Raffoon! The quality of conversations in the Suggestions forum is higher, because only those interested in improving the game go there!

As I've said in other threads.... For a conversation to be of higher quality, there first has to actually be A CONVERSATION.

Like it or not, the Suggestions forum is a ghost town. Moving things there kills any conversation around a post.

You can tell us that the developers read every single word in that forum, and it still won't change the fact that some people would like to actually discuss their ideas on a forum, rather than dropping them into a black hole where they'll be seen by 48 people and not responded to over the course of a week.

killerkoala

they should move the whole "suggestion and bugs forums" and make it a sub forum in general discusion, sorta like "Announcements" on some or "Forum" in tips. that would increase traffic in both and it's be easy to check the bugs section without clicking back or scrolling to the top to get back to main forum page.

GurlBYE

This thread is a pretty good mirror of the level of discourse between players and devs. It's super interesting.

Here's some info, and some discussion, maybe some alt suggestions, lets build on an idea based on the actual users of the forum.

Yes, Yes, I see, nothing will change. Stop discussing this.

Raffoon

For contrast, there's currently a thread on the General forums, which also has 0 replies (it's pretty similar to another post the same person made yesterday).

That post was made about 65-70 minutes ago.

It has 112 views.

So, even if you just compare topics that don't get replies, there are 3 times as many views in an HOUR on the General forum as there are in OVER A WEEK in the Suggestions subforum.

Moon Roach

Raffoon wrote:

For contrast, there's currently a thread on the General forums, which also has 0 replies (it's pretty similar to another post the same person made yesterday).

That post was made about 65-70 minutes ago.

It has 112 views.

So, even if you just compare topics that don't get replies, there are 3 times as many views in an HOUR on the General forum as there are in OVER A WEEK in the Suggestions subforum.

Don't forget to factor in bots when considering the number of views. I'm pretty sure that some threads over there have no views apart from bots.

:edit: oh, and devs of course, who must be logged in as guests, as otherwise they'd occasionally appear in the list of users logged in.

The Bob The

OneLastGambit wrote:

I go in there pretty much everytime I log in and most of the time either have a suggestion or comments on someone elses while I'm there. Do I think they are read? Maybe. Do I think they should be responded to? No. The devs don't have time to get into flame wars - which is exactly what happens when they do comment on stuff - when they have to get things ready for the game and monitor...you know, do their jobs.

Engagement would be nice, but I wouldn't care so much about responses if some of the ideas were put into action instead. Now this has been a tad different recently, we asked for :

New events - Venom Bomb, Cho event, GR event
New Stories - See above
A character - people have been asking for ghost rider for a long time
New mechanics (whether its good or not is to be seen)
New prizing structure for placements

Now we got all those things, are they exactly as we want? Nope. They aren't. Could they be better? Yes they definitely could. Consider this though - isn't t better to make changes in baby steps and test the water? yes. Better to get some small victories and keep them than get a huge victory and have it snatched away (we all know how the community feels about nerfs).

In short...err yes I read suggestions

You are consistently one of the classier members of these here forums, OLG.

Pylgrim

GurlBYE wrote:

This thread is a pretty good mirror of the level of discourse between players and devs. It's super interesting.

Here's some info, and some discussion, maybe some alt suggestions, lets build on an idea based on the actual users of the forum.

Yes, Yes, I see, nothing will change. Stop discussing this.

Excellent comment. Here's a thread offering logical reasons why a certain decision was poorly thought and rather than contributing to the community is taking away from it. The response? "No, because this is the way we have decided to do things and we believe it to be right regardless of any evidence that you provide to the contrary; we are right because we decided that we are right. Now shut up and comply".

TLCstormz

DayvBang wrote:

Infrared wrote:

How about leaving discussions about suggested features/changes in General, and only moving posts that have no discussion value? If we want to make sure the devs see it, put a link to it in the Suggestions but let the discussion continue in General.

How about no?

Nobody feels the need to point out how blatantly CATTY this was????? lmfao. Yowza.

Me-ow, girlfriend.

Dayv

Locked.