Feedback Forums Are Not Fulfilling Their Purpose

[Spindle99]

They basically boil down to an army of spam that nobody outside of fellow players actually read right now.  The devs can't wade through it because it's just not time friendly to do so.

 

I came to this game and wanted to offer up a ton of feedback hoping that it might help the game grow, but since it's fairly obvious that nobody really reads it you start to not want to waste your time and effort on a pointless task.

 

This game has community moderators and a design council, why don't they get more use?

 

Why not tell people to vote on things they like in suggestions, anything that does not get 10 +1 votes in a few days is deleted by the community mods and of those 10+ vote suggestions stick them into the design council forum for them to vote on too with the same vote idea.   Can even get people form the DC to make a TLDR version of ideas.

 

This allows 2 forms of refinement on suggestions that the devs can then look at and decide if it's a good idea or not on a fortnightly basis.

 

I'm not saying the devs should do what the players suggest, not even after 2 refined votes.  But it sorts the wheat from the chaff and lets them actually look at it in a form that is workable with their busy schedules.  That is the biggest problem here.

 

Players do have some great ideas and feedback, it's just a crime the devs don't read it due to the busy nature of their jobs and the spam nature of this forum.

Edited April 21, 2015 by Spindle99

[VKhaun]

Because the same army of spam will vote... they'll vote to make themselves stronger and all the enemies easier/weaker. I don't even know why we do community hot topic votes. It scares me the sorts of things they ask sometimes.

 

Votes are for fun stuff and popularity contests. Naming things. Prioritizing things. Events. Maybe also neutral things that don't involve buffs/nerfs, like U.I. changes.

Edited April 21, 2015 by VKhaun

[AlphaSierraMike]

I think deleting just because of not enough votes might be a bit harsh, I personally don't like using a simple thumbs up in any forms of communication, it's just... vague. I prefer discussions more

 

Maybe something like the Reddit system, where the thread with the most votes/most traffic are placed at the top, and the developers can treat it like a checklist, prioritise over the changes that the community are interested in, and once that suggestion is either implemented or rejected, then the thread would be archived. And the process continues to the next most liked thread.

[izzatuw]

Yeah let's let DC do the majority of the handling because all of them are bright minds

/sarcasm.

-looks at votes for the past augments-

-looks at ripline swing-

[izzatuw]

I think deleting just because of not enough votes might be a bit harsh, I personally don't like using a simple thumbs up in any forms of communication, it's just... vague. I prefer discussions more

 

Maybe something like the Reddit system, where the thread with the most votes/most traffic are placed at the top, and the developers can treat it like a checklist, prioritise over the changes that the community are interested in, and once that suggestion is either implemented or rejected, then the thread would be archived. And the process continues to the next most liked thread.

^ I like this. Sometimes threads are just hardly looked at, I've seen tons of threads with great content but the lack viewers make it difficult.

[Llyssa]

It's laborious, but if you look through the feed back sections, and then read through the patch notes, you'll see that a lot of stuff, even things with no comments and no likes, gets attention.

 

Just because they dont' *say* something doesn't mean they didn't see it.

[Llyssa]

I think deleting just because of not enough votes might be a bit harsh, I personally don't like using a simple thumbs up in any forms of communication, it's just... vague. I prefer discussions more

 

Maybe something like the Reddit system, where the thread with the most votes/most traffic are placed at the top, and the developers can treat it like a checklist, prioritise over the changes that the community are interested in, and once that suggestion is either implemented or rejected, then the thread would be archived. And the process continues to the next most liked thread.

Horrid idea. The things with the most traffic are awful ideas that have hundreds of people attacking them for being awful, and 1 or really dumb people trying to defend it.

 

Those already stay near the tops of the forums for weeks, there's no reason the devs should focus on the bad ideas just because they get tons of traffic.

[Krak_Nihilus]

I can assure that they do listem to feedback. Of course not everything gets implemented but that doesn't change it.

I once did a thread about how mission type is not visible in squad if you're not looking at the exact node. A fix was implemented like in the next update. And this thread got like 5 up votes and maybe 2 comments.

So no, a system as you described is not needed. In fact it would only make rhing worse the way I see it.

[Fifield]

Horrid idea. The things with the most traffic are awful ideas that have hundreds of people attacking them for being awful, and 1 or really dumb people trying to defend it.

 

Those already stay near the tops of the forums for weeks, there's no reason the devs should focus on the bad ideas just because they get tons of traffic.

 

This.

The best suggestions disappear off the front page within hours.

 

I saw 2 amazing suggestions from clearly intelligent players who obviously had been thinking about it for months, came to the forum just to share their idea and almost nobody read them.  These are the people we need making suggestions but they're just driven away by artificial lack of interest.

 

However, if you come up with a populist ("make this easier please") or dumb suggestion or a doom thread, it will stick around for days.  Also, new threads are often worse implementations than prior suggestions.

The feedback forum does not work.  You'd be hard pushed to design a worse way to get the best suggestions from players.

[BlueAnchorite]

I've come back recently to the forums to see literally the same threads being posted that were being posted 4 months ago when I last read the forums. There needs to be some form of system to elevate threads or have them marked for removal (such as doom threads that don't have any actual basis).

 

The Council is a prime ground for DE to have committed players find threads, and discuss them in the council forums to be refined and seen by DE, instead of trawling through hundreds of posts.

 

Something has to change for DE to actively look at these suggestions.

[MagPrime]

I can speak from experience that DE does check the forums.  A few weeks ago I made a thread about the raid.  I think only 4 other people commented on it, a total of 12 upvotes between all posts and no comments from DE.  

 

What happened with that thread?  Well, I had it locked due to idjits that showed up to be idjits but!  Somehow, it got noticed and was one of the voted topics over in Hot Topics.

 

DE does have the time to view stuff on the forums, there is at least one that is here 8 hours a day.  (DEDanielle)