All Networks Put (slightly) more focus on suggestions again

[xHappyMood]

Spoiler: Disclaimer

Before anyone thinks I am trying to be rude again in this thread, I am not. I am just trying to get my point across I really don’t mean anything bad with it

Hoi

A while ago, this thread was posted, announcing a change in how suggestions would be dealt with on the forums. Previously suggestions that reached 25 agrees would all be forwarded, and all of those forwarded threads were supposed to get a reply from the server team, where they would either be planned (which means they were going to be implemented) or denied (which means they weren’t). As the thread says, that was too much work, and it will be especially now that (I think?) the server team only consists of @Story anymore.

Since that thread, responses aren’t guaranteed anymore, no matter how many agrees it has. In theory, this would be an okay alternative, but at this point I think even bringing back the previous system would be a better solution. Since the change in the suggestions system (if I have counted correctly) 27 suggestion threads (each thread is only counted once) have gotten a response from Story, of which 3 weren’t really responding to the actual suggestion. 2 other threads were responded to by Camezonda. This results in a total of 29 (26) threads getting an answer in 220 days, or an average of 0,131818181818182 (0,118181818181818) threads a day. Aka 7,586206896551724 (8,461538461538462) between each time a thread got a reply. Of the suggestions made in this time, 0 got planned and only 4 got implemented. This means it took 55 days on average between each implemented suggestion.

Now I do appreciate that the quality of suggestions and the amount of actually well-thought-out suggestions that are worth replying to has been… below par to say the least. I don’t think these two things are completely unrelated, though. Since there is only very little reaction to suggestions, there is also no big incentive to make them. They are most likely to get ‘ignored’ anyway, and that can be quite demotivating if you’re trying to spend quite some time on thinking about your suggestion.

I think suggestions are a very important aspect in determining what the community wants to happen, and I don’t think many people (if anyone at all) would disagree with that. Therefore, I think there are three possible solutions.

1: Bringing back the previous way of dealing with suggestions. I doubt that will happen though, it was too much work with a bigger server team, so it will be now. Even if suggestions are reacted to very slowly, though, I think it would be better than this. The forwarded tag, and promise of an eventual response still provide an incentive for putting some time into suggestions.

2: Try to at least answer any well-thought-out suggestions. At this time, most suggestions that are replied to by Story are replied to because they are denied, are corrected with facts, or because they are just straight up stupid. Personally I think these replies are less necessary, and should be avoided if the ‘better’ suggestions are not replied to, especially since most of those replies don’t actually need to come from Story. Some do, of course, and I do think replying to suggestions with a lot of discussion is important, even if they are going to be denied. I still think, however, that the well-thought-out suggestions should, instead, be focussed on.

3: Find a different system to deal with suggestions altogether. I don’t have a lot to say about this since I can’t really think of anything (nor can anyone else I suppose, or it’d have happened already).

I know staff has more to do than just reply to suggestions, but I think suggestions are very important.

Okay bye besties x

 

[Story]

It's worth noting that the suggestion changes were put into effect right before we started 1.19 development which is taking up pretty much all of our resources so we haven't had any suggestion potential anyways, hence my low response time.

You'll find that before that I did respond often to suggestions.


Your main argument for bringing it back is that suggestions don't get responded to as much, but that was the whole point of making the change. We didn't and still don't have the people or development power to deal with most of them.

It's also impossible for the community to see the internal impact of such a change so it's easy to say from where you are standing that everything got worse. For me, this change has had the largest impact on my production speed as the Server Producer.


Generally, the way suggestions are used is that when a game is slated for an update- I go through all of their suggestions and pick out the community favorites, I then go through them and pick out the ideas that I think work the best and try to include them. But this is dependent on whether the game gets an update in the first place.

For example; at the moment only EggWars & Lucky Islands are getting full updates, EggWars gets nearly no suggestions at all, they are usually very minor or don't get agreed with.

Lucky Islands does and I've spent a lot of time on just one suggestion alone due to how much is in it. (https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/a...slands-suggestions-definitive-edition.309928/)


To be frank, there are barely any good suggestions. I've just grazed the list and noticed I've read nearly all of them and I don't recall much of any of them getting agrees or being good ideas.

Being forced to put them back into part of my admin work just seems like a bad idea for internal production reasons. In any form.


At this point in time I still strongly disagree with having a suggestions system and these past few months have made me feel even firmer about this point. If you disagree further based on anything I've said then I'm happy to continue this discussion.

 

[xHappyMood]

It's worth noting that the suggestion changes were put into effect right before we started 1.19 development which is taking up pretty much all of our resources so we haven't had any suggestion potential anyways, hence my low response time.

that is fair. still though, i don't think a suggestion would have to be implemented right away for it to still be motivating if they at least got an answer - even if it would take till after the 1.19 update for them to actually eventually be implemented

You'll find that before that I did respond often to suggestions.

i know, that's why i made this thread, the amount of replies to suggestions has dropped a lot since the update

To be frank, there are barely any good suggestions.

indeed, and i also mentioned that in my original post. but as i already sad i am not at all surprised by that. making a good suggestion takes time, and people are not willing to spend time if their suggestion will very likely be ignored anyway.

i know you have a lot to do and suggestions are not your main priority, but it doesn't have to be much, most threads can be completely ignored because they're just stupid, but a reply here and there, especially to the suggestions in which more time has gone, definitely would help to motivate people to make better suggestions again. the state of the suggestions subforum atm is just depressing

 

[Story]

but as i already sad i am not at all surprised by that. making a good suggestion takes time, and people are not willing to spend time if their suggestion will very likely be ignored anyway.

This isn't the problem.

People could write like 50 words as a suggestion, as long as the base idea is good then I can flesh it out.

It's all about the idea, not the suggestion size or quality. We don't need suggestions to tell us every intricate detail down to the integer because that's what I do, that's my whole job. I need to rewrite them anyways.

My 'suggestion' for suggestion writers is to focus on the concept, not the extravagant details.

i know you have a lot to do and suggestions are not your main priority, but it doesn't have to be much, most threads can be completely ignored because they're just stupid, but a reply here and there, especially to the suggestions in which more time has gone, definitely would help to motivate people to make better suggestions again. the state of the suggestions subforum atm is just depressing

I do feel as though I do a bit here and there, you did say this in your thread, you just wanted it to be even more frequent.

Like I will respond to threads if I feel as though the concept is good, generally, I don't respond to threads that aren't good ideas in my opinion which can be problematic but it saves a lot of time.

If people want me to review their suggestions they can just send them to me directly or tag me. I will try to look at it.

 

[i hate hackers1234]

I don't think that 25 agrees is possible looking at the past like 100 suggestions, the only one that got "implemented is relatednoob's suggestion and that is only because he is a youuber and famous. I mean, it was a good idea, but there were lots and lots of other posts which had the same idea but they weren't implemented because they were not famous