More community feedback for suggestions?

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Hello everyone,

I personally would like to see more participation in suggestion threads. I see many threads where people put some good amount of effort and time to create a suggestion thread and rarely do these threads get more then 3-4 replies. This is kinda sad, because good suggestions will be out of sight very fast if they don’t get bumped regulary and double posting/self-bumping isn’t a viable option I guess, especially since it makes the OP look like an attention-seeker. I ask for this, because good suggestions should stay up, should be discussed and as a result get some attention from the developers. I mean, I know they read alot of the stuff that gets posted here, but I doubt they are able to see and read everything we post here, so we should try to help them pick the right threads and we can do that if we keep good suggestions up. Another advantage is, that if people discuss suggestions, it quite often happens that people start to find mistakes in the suggestion or make it even better.

And I want to be perfectly honest here: I like to do suggestions myself and I tend to get some good feedback for my suggestions most of the time. But after some replies the threads vanishes for good and that’s not very motivating to keep on doing suggestions, especially that take some effort and time.

edit: Here is an idea:

Monthly Suggestion Hightlight:

What is this?
This is a video created by Stephanie (we all love her voice and videos :smiley:) which highlights suggestions that caught your attention by any reason. This should happen once or twice a month and the length of the video should be between 5 and 10 minutes. Another thing is, that the links to the suggestion threads should be posted below the video, so that the community can dive in and give even more feedback to the suggestion. I think people would like to participate in suggestions that received attention from the developers.

What is the content of those videos?
Quite simple. You talk about suggestions and explain why you hightlight them in the video. It’s not about “we like this” or “we dont like this”. I would like to see a more in-depth explanation. Some topics you could talk about:

Was the suggestion well-written?
Does the suggestion fit into our game?
What makes the suggestion so interesting for you?
Did the suggestion inspire you for new gameplay mechanics?
Was it something you have already discussed and does the suggestion add something new to your past discussion?

Those would be great and interesting topics I guess.

What are the advantages of having such a hightlight?
Discussing these topics has several advantages. It hightlights good or useful suggestions and the community can learn more about team radiants thought about suggestions. We could learn what kind of suggestions fit into the game and how to make good suggestions at all. And it hightlights how important it is for team radiant that the community makes and discusses suggestions.

Has Stephanie Dee do all the work?
No! By all means, the hightlight is something that should involve the whole team radiant. Stephanie and the Moderators can pick suggestions and team radiant should read these suggestions and give their in-depth opinion about the suggestion. Stephanie could even hightlight which member of team radiant made which comment about the suggestions. This way, we can get a feeling on how a suggestion is perceived by a programmer and how it is perceived by a model/art-designer. A suggestion may be good at the first look, but maybe it’s neanly impossible to code and therefore they have give the suggestion a clear “no”. These are the things that would be interesting, at least for me.

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This is definitely a good thing to be thinking about, thanks for bringing it up.

One thing we (the mods) could perhaps start doing is pinning good suggestions, of course that would bring up the problem of what makes a suggestion “good”, along with a bunch of other things.

When i have more time (probably tomorrow) i’ll talk with the other moderators to see what they think of the idea.

Thanks again for bringing this up. :slight_smile:

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I think the main problem is that most suggestion are recurrent. So we (I at least) just silently appreciate it, without much to say about it.
Some are also kinda of expect to became reality soon or later, so I also don’t add any input.

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well…ill give some feedback then! or random thoughts? more likely…but in the spirit of feedback!

Personally i get lots of ideas, But i’m not by any means an english master or a forum warrior (no offence meant)
But you need to sell an idea really well in any forum to be noticed or heard in my experience.
It goes for something as simple as how you format your texts and if you add pictures and make the idea spring to life.

And i have no sutch skills what so ever! :smiley: but its still my opinion you can get a lot better feedback, by giving the post itself some extra work.

Also there’s some degree of not wanting to look stupid! my mind shoots for the stars and that’s rarely possible in any game :grin:

And personally for ideas that isn’t related to building aspects of the game. i have minimal interests in those
again a bit related to shooting for the stars…i love stoneheart for what it is and surely for whatever it will be.
but the dream game for me would be dwarf fortress just in a 3d world as pretty as stonehearth.

And as amazing as stonehearth is it wont have that scale is what the realist in me is saying so i remain somewhat disinterested in topics outside building.

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A while ago, I was talking with @TurtleSquish in a PM about how the same thing was happening with stories. Not getting much response on anything is pretty discouraging.

Ultimately I think it’s somewhat unavoidable with Discourse. Without replying to a topic or manually marking it to track replies, topics tend to slip through the cracks for me. I almost never check the front page, just the New and Unread sections.

I think long, thought-out posts tend to be skimmed by people who don’t have the time to read them when first checking them (which of course you can’t really check beforehand), and then never revisited. I’ve done it myself. Or I’ll ignore a topic if the first post doesn’t have much and then miss out on replies. Or I’ll just assume other people will have more useful replies than I will.

I really don’t know what could be done about this.

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In the KSP forums, there was a threads of the month thread, that elected the best threads of the month (word choice, I know) and pinned them for a month. It kinda does what you want, but only for a few select threads every month.

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personally i dont have the time to read every single post on the forum. I have to make a selection. So suggestions and mods topics i dont read or follow. I just skim over them to see if anything peeks my attention. Other topics i skim over too with most of my reply’s going to gameplay topics and support topics.

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I think that a “culture of feedback” vs a “culture of comment” is a big driver in how communities interact on a forum like this. A lot of the time these days, people learn to comment on a discussion so that they look like they’re paying attention, and are seen to be commenting. It’s a widely-recognised complaint about social media and internet use in a more general sense; but it’s relevant here because, as @AaronD @coasterspaul and @Psyduck mention in various ways, those comments “for the sake of making a comment” can push a discussion to the front of the page without actually continuing/adding to that conversation.

One of the most valuable lessons I learned as a student is there’s no such thing as a “bad” contribution to a discussion. We all say silly things from time to time, we all make factual errors or faux pas; but generally those things fade into the background during an active discussion. I figured out early in my academic journey that saying what you think will almost always pull the attention to the content of what you’re saying, rather than its delivery.

With that in mind, it became a lot easier to contribute to discussions; whether at school or uni or some random conversations among friends.

Now, anyone who has followed my post here will know that I talk a lot. I do this because I want to try and let readers see the whole picture of what I think about a subject I’m discussing – if I’m advocating a particular option over another then I want them to know why I chose that option; if I’m making a suggestion then I want to make clear all the significant ramifications of that suggestion; if I’m trying to explain a mechanic or feature then I want to give the reader a working knowledge of that mechanic/feature, not just answer “this is how you do such-and-such specific thing”, but “this is how you can use such-and-such to do anything within this field that you want to do.” In short, I’m trying to share knowledge as well as opinion/decision/argument; and if I’m making a conclusion then I want to share the steps to how I got there.

Now, that’s all good in theory, but how can we derive useful practices from those intentions? Well, I have a couple of things I try to do whenever I post, which I’ve found to be effective at driving the conversation forward, or adding new material to the discussion. Those are:

  • when making or contributing to a suggestion, I try to give a use-case scenario, or some other image of how that suggestion should look and work when fully implemented. This allows other contributors to carry on the discussion from a new angle – they can either focus on the behind-the-scenes of how the mechanic/feature works in the code, or they can focus on how that mechanic/feature is presented to players and how it adds to the gameplay experience. This allows the less code-savvy among us (and I’m firmly in that category, hahaha!) to still help out with feature development by designing end-points that the mechanics and features can be used for.

  • when commenting on someone’s artwork or other creation, I try to either give constructive feedback about how it could be improved, or in a case where I can’t think of any way to improve it (and that’s most of the time), give feedback on why I like that creation so that the creator can hopefully zero in on what’s working well for them. A practical example: rather than “ooh, that’s an awesome house!”, I try to say something like “ooh, the way you’ve combined those vertical supports with the recessed windows makes the house look ornate, just like a home fit for a master crafter.”

By focusing on how something does or does not work, I try to add a critical or analytical layer to the conversations I take part in. Not everyone is here for that kind of discussion, which is fair enough; but for those of us who like to engage in that kind of analytical or critical discussion it’s an opening to do so. From what I’ve seen, there’s already a great culture of constructive feedback and criticism, particularly in the Desktop Tuesday threads. The moderators have certainly been leading by example here, driving the conversations forward with open-ended questions and the kind of feedback which begs follow-up.

I think that if Radiant applied the same treatment to suggestion threads, then suggestions with a depth waiting to be explored would quickly make themselves known. A few prompts, like “how should this work when taken to the extreme?” or “what would you do with this in the early game, before you can build all of the connected parts?” can spark other readers’ creative answers, potentially evolving the discussion into new areas.

It may seem a bit robotic, but I think that “feedback templates” would actually benefit the devs here quite a bit – a list of simple, open-ended questions that they can throw at any suggestions which cross their radar, quickly unpacking how involved or simple that suggestion is. Of course, most suggestions will have immediately apparent context, and not every question on the template would be useful every time; but if a system like that could streamline the process for unpacking suggestions then surely the long-term benefits would be tremendous. And naturally, as players come up with new questions and insightful perspectives, those can be added to the list of possible considerations to level against suggestion threads.

What I’m imaging here is basically a group of conversation starters; rather than some kind of checklist. It would be like those ice-breaking activities and games played at, well, every time random strangers need to form into a unit (whether it’s a new class being formed, or a business team being set up, or so on)… every thread is, effectively, a meeting between some users who “know” each other and some new faces; so having that list of conversation drivers to hand would help the new faces jump into the conversation more easily :slight_smile:

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Well, a solution for this would be a suggestion guide with fixed criteria. Players who want to make a suggestion that can be pinned could use these criteria when making a suggestion. Furthermore, one of the criteria should be that the suggestion must be liked from the devs (or by a huge part of the community). If someone meets the criteria, but the suggestion itself doesn’t fit into the game or is not in line with the vision of team radiant, then it won’t get pinned, no matter what. I think these would be accaptable terms for pinning threads.

This could work. Quite similiar to what 8bitCrab suggested. Combined with the suggested criteria, it could keep some of the good suggestions up.

This may be true, but it’s only one of many reasons why people don’t reply in suggestion threads. I started a suggestion some days ago myself and added a TL;DR version at the end of the post so that people with less time can read the suggestion. But it didn’t change much when it comes to replies. Here it is:

I got 2 replies effectively. Maybe someone else suggested an adventurer already, but I think my version of the adventurer would fit good into the game and is well thought out. I also tried to format my text as good as possible and like I said, I added a TL;DR version.

Great post. And I agree. Even if you don’t have much to say about a suggestion, just giving a “nice suggestion” or “I like it” is already a good contribution. It keeps a thread up, it shows that you are interested in the suggestion and it will certainly increase the attention a thread gets, when enough people reply. And with more attention more mods/devs will read the thread and also more people who want to contribute even more (a more analytical post) will recognize the thread then.

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Without a doubt this is a problem, and as @coasterspaul mentioned, me and him have discussed this in the past. I’m not sure there is any easy solution.

Don’t get time to make a more in depth post now. I will try to get to it later.

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I don’t know if there is a way to do this but how about the “like” system bumping a thread?

I don’t always have the time to comment of every thread that peaks my interest, so I have to pick and choose more times than not (I also take extended leaves from the forums). It is also sometimes just easier to “like” a comment, instead of commenting.

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Not possible in Discourse at the moment. I also expect the forum developers would say no to this as it would make the homepage very busy with topics moving up and down.

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Meh, I am actually all good myself and think it is okay “as is”. The Moderators, tend to frequent the boards often, along with those in TR, so I think it’s rare that thing’s get passed by that much.

They have so many differing suggestions, they probably have enough content for three games now :slight_smile:

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@8BitCrab @jomaxro How about this:

Monthly Suggestion Hightlight:

What is this?
This is a video created by Stephanie (we all love her voice and videos :smiley:) which highlights suggestions that caught your attention by any reason. This should happen once or twice a month and the length of the video should be between 5 and 10 minutes. Another thing is, that the links to the suggestion threads should be posted below the video, so that the community can dive in and give even more feedback to the suggestion. I think people would like to participate in suggestions that received attention from the developers.

What is the content of those videos?
Quite simple. You talk about suggestions and explain why you hightlight them in the video. It’s not about “we like this” or “we dont like this”. I would like to see a more in-depth explanation. Some topics you could talk about:

Was the suggestion well-written?
Does the suggestion fit into our game?
What makes the suggestion so interesting for you?
Did the suggestion inspire you for new gameplay mechanics?
Was it something you have already discussed and does the suggestion add something new to your past discussion?

Those would be great and interesting topics I guess.

What are the advantages of having such a hightlight?
Discussing these topics has several advantages. It hightlights good or useful suggestions and the community can learn more about team radiants thoughts about suggestions. We could learn what kind of suggestions fit into the game and how to make good suggestions at all. And it hightlights how important it is for team radiant that the community makes and discusses suggestions.

Has Stephanie Dee do all the work?
No! By all means, the hightlight is something that should involve the whole team radiant. Stephanie and the Moderators can pick suggestions and team radiant should read these suggestions and give their in-depth opinion about the suggestions. Stephanie could even hightlight which member of team radiant made which comment about the suggestions. This way, we can get a feeling on how a suggestion is perceived by a programmer and how it is perceived by a model/art-designer. A suggestion may be good at the first look, but maybe it’s nearly impossible to code and therefore they have give the suggestion a clear “no”. These are the things that would be interesting, at least for me.

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This is certainly an interesting and well thought out idea! My biggest concern is what has been brought up previously - how do we decide what to feature? By asking each of the mods and devs to contribute something to the video would diversify it, I’m stuck thinking about all the other topics.

Let’s say we do this bi-weekly. In the last 14 days 34 suggestion topics had activity in them. We can’t mention 34 topics in a video, so let’s say we end up picking 7. How will the other 27 topic writers feel about not being in the video? How do we avoid making someone feel that their suggestion isn’t as valuable as another?

So I guess I’m very hesitant to “curate” suggestions in any way. I’m all for increasing feedback/discussion, but I don’t think this is the way to do so.

Disclosure: This is my personal opinion. Other moderators and devs might have different views on this.

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Ok, this might end in alot of work or might get complicated, but it could be a solution to the problem “How will the other 27 topic writers feel about not being in the video?” and would further involve the community in the whole suggestion hightlight process.

  1. Suggestion must meet certain criteria to be included in the suggestion hightlight (criteria we still have to define).
  2. A specific person (Community Manager, Support Mod etc.) makes a short summary of all the suggestions made during the month-
  3. This specific person creates a news that includes a poll. In this poll, all suggestions are included, that met the criteria. The news is posted at the end of a month.
  4. The community can then decide which suggestions they would like to hear more about from team radiant/Stephanie Dee. The best 7 suggestions (or whatever fits into one 10 minute video) will be picked for the suggestion hightlight. All the other suggestions didn’t pick up enough interest from the community or didn’t meet the criteria to be included.
  5. 2 weeks later, the suggestion highlight video will be posted in the news section with all the links to the included suggestions.

This way we can assure that only suggestions are included, that are most liked by the community. No one could blame team radiant or the support mods if a suggestion is not included, since the community decided which suggestion will make it and which not.

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I’m not against solutions to my hypothetical scenario, but as you point out it is a lot of work. While I don’t know how to encourage it, I feel time would be better spent getting the community to discuss suggestions as they are posted then do all this work to make a video.

One possibility (instead of a curated video with discussion) would be some type of “This week in Suggestions” topic. Someone (a mod or a community member) could create a simple topic that lists all of the new suggestions from the week, and a one sentence summary. I don’t know if this will help, but I know for me if I wasn’t a moderator I wouldn’t read every single post, especially the long and detailed ones, so getting it in summary form with a single sentence that could peak my interest might work.

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I know. If you would do this, it would probably need a new person (or persons) who voluntary concentrates on reading all the suggestions, summerize them, make a poll and then let Stephanie/team radiant do the rest. I think this WOULD work greatly, but like said: It needs a dedicated and reliable person who does that every month, because I dont think Stephanie has the time to read all the suggestions, summerize them and create a poll and then do the video on top of that.

Well, this is something we could at least try once or twice and watch how it will influence the posting behavior in suggestion threads. This thread should ofc be pinned on top until the next thread with suggestions follows up. If it does help, we should keep it and if not, we can think about other solutions. :slight_smile:

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Well, in line with the feedback in this thread I created this thread:

It had some participants and the idea, that suggestions should get a feature which is based on the community vote. I up this thread because I would like to hear some opinions: Did you think the thread was good or helpful? Did it inspire you to read suggestions you may have missed? And would you actually like to see a feature-video that focuses and the most liked suggestions? Feel free to discuss (@jomaxro @sdee @8BitCrab). :slight_smile:

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I just shared my thoughts via PM, but I’ll summarize here. My personal feelings were that the topic was OK, not bad, not great. Regardless of the format, people are going to respond to things that really interest them. I also noted that many suggestions are similar to previous ones, so that also likely has an effect on the reponse level.

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