Differing rules for "ideas and suggestions"

[Hazel Caballus]

Spending time in some Elvenar forums (beta, DE, EN, US) I noticed remarkable differences in the way how "ideas and suggestions" are treated by the CMs and how the (different) guidelines are communictated. Thus, I started to do some research comparing different forums. When I wasn't capable of understanding the language, I used google translate to get an idea how the ideas section is working. Admittedly, I tended to pick mostly those forums which were more accessible to me language-wise. If there were users who could provide info from forums which are not represented yet, I'd appreciate your help.

In the following table you can see my results. I've been really surprised to see how different the ideas sections are treated, so that there were barely two forums which followed exactly the same guidelines. Let's have a look:

When there are no criteria for forwarding given, the "ideas and suggestions" guidelines of the respective forums often include a statement that the CM or mod will choose the most promising ideas to forward them.

As you can see, most forums lack transparancy regarding the way how ideas are forwarded and discussed among CMs/developers. The US forum appears to be the most transparent in this regard.

Questions for a discussion:
Did you know about these differences and if yes (or no), didn't it surprise you?
Why does Inno refrain from harmonizing the "ideas and suggestions" guidelines? Should we take an effort to change this?
Which forum would you go to if you wanted your idea to have the highest chances for implementation?

 

[Deleted User - 65628]

Spending time in some Elvenar forums (beta, DE, EN, US) I noticed remarkable differences in the way how "ideas and suggestions" are treated by the CMs and how the (different) guidelines are communictated. Thus, I started to do some research comparing different forums. When I wasn't capable of understanding the language, I used google translate to get an idea how the ideas section is working. Admittedly, I tended to pick mostly those forums which were more accessible to me language-wise. If there were users who could provide info from forums which are not represented yet, I'd appreciate your help.

In the following table you can see my results. I've been really surprised to see how different the ideas sections are treated, so that there were barely two forums which followed exactly the same guidelines. Let's have a look:
View attachment 9786

When there are no criteria for forwarding given, the "ideas and suggestions" guidelines of the respective forums often include a statement that the CM or mod will choose the most promising ideas to forward them.

As you can see, most forums lack transparancy regarding the way how ideas are forwarded and discussed among CMs/developers. The US forum appears to be the most transparent in this regard.

Questions for a discussion:
Did you know about these differences and if yes (or no), didn't it surprise you?
Why does Inno refrain from harmonizing the "ideas and suggestions" guidelines? Should we take an effort to change this?
Which forum would you go to if you wanted your idea to have the highest chances for implementation?

from your table, I'd say you have the best chance going US
I stopped suggesting anything on the french forum due to this total mess

 

[Hazel Caballus]

I stopped suggesting anything on the french forum due to this total mess

The way how ideas are treated there appears to be quite strict.
I stopped putting efforts into suggesting something on the German forum because I feel like the ideas are mostly ignored anyway - no matter how much positive feedback they receive.

I‘ve been wondering what would need to be changed in order to improve the experience of the players and I think that - without actually changing anything in-game - it could really be improved
- by giving better (more detailed, not the standardized one-sentence-reply) explanations why something has been recjected by the developers (or the CMs)
- by making the whole process much more transparent (the US forum could serve as an example)
- by providing equal and relatively simple-to-use guidelines for all forums
- by avoiding unnecessary bureaucracy.

It does not make any sense to me why ideas proposed in the beta forum need 80% approval, while ideas proposed in the US need only >50%. Then again, you can bring up an idea in the EN forum (and also some others) and after a few posts only, a CM jumps in saying: “Great idea, I’ll forward it to the devs!” No lengthy discussion nor polls needed...

 

[Alcaro]

Then again, you can bring up an idea in the EN forum (and also some others) and after a few posts only, a CM jumps in saying: “Great idea, I’ll forward it to the devs!” No lengthy discussion nor polls needed...

there's only one moderator which is actually so willing to help forwarding new ideas. About a week or two weeks ago I saw a good suggestion blocked and closed for further discussion after only few posts, IMHO because the mod didn't accept others could have a different opinion.

EDIT
Not to mention that the criteria for forwarding are very vague, most times you are at the mercy of mods. I saw answers which showed clearly that the mod didn't even understand what suggestion was (I don't want to give more details) and the answer was (in very few words) completely parallel with the suggestion.

 

[Deleted User - 60111]

I saw a good suggestion blocked and closed for further discussion after only few posts, IMHO because the mod didn't accept others could have a different opinion.

Now that's the EN forums I remember. Good times.

Onto the topic:
I think anything other than the German/US/Beta system is just silly.
The Beta one has a massive flaw in the system too though, and that's the 20 vote minimum.
It can (and has) led to situations where an idea with 19 yes and zero no gets trashed while a 16:4 gets passed up the ladder.
There are only a dozen really active posters here, most of whom represent entire FS, and live ones as well. The minimum votes should be removed.

Also, the very excellent mod on US even uses her own discretion when something is logical and non-controversial and she drops the whole system and simply forwards the idea immediately.

So, Good, logical rules, with a good logical overseer is the key.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

It does not make any sense to me why ideas proposed in the beta forum need 80% approval, while ideas proposed in the US need only >50%. Then again, you can bring up an idea in the EN forum (and also some others) and after a few posts only, a CM jumps in saying: “Great idea, I’ll forward it to the devs!” No lengthy discussion nor polls needed...

Last I saw the info, the idea also has to get a minimum of 20 votes to even have a chance to get forwarded.

Also, never believe a mod or CM who says they will forward anything to the devs. Our CM on the US forum has told us the exact procedure for what happens with approved suggestions. Every two weeks, each forum CM picks the three best ideas that were approved on their forum, and then all the CMs get together and vote on all those ideas, and then only three of the approved ideas from all the forums combined get sent forward to the devs to consider. This game is in over 20 languages, and anywhere from 1 to 8 servers per language, plus the EN servers also in English, so 20+ forums for the game, and three suggestions, out of maybe 20 or 30 or more, get sent to the devs every two weeks. And people wonder why some things just seem to disappear or take forever to get implemented.

 

[Hazel Caballus]

Not to mention that the criteria for forwarding are very vague, most times you are at the mercy of mods. I saw answers which showed clearly that the mod didn't even understand what suggestion was (I don't want to give more details) and the answer was (in very few words) completely parallel with the suggestion.

I didn’t mean to advocate in favor of the EN system. I’ve just seen that a couple of times (also in other forums which don’t have any clear criteria) and thought “wow, I wished things would sometimes go so smoothly in the German forum” because it sometimes feels highly bureaucratic there (used to be worse in the past, when players had to give a written vote first, before they’d eventually start a poll). The downside clearly is that players in these forums are completely dependent on the discretion of the mods/CM. Therefore, it is never a good substitute for any transparent system using polls.

Also, the very excellent mod on US even uses her own discretion when something is logical and non-controversial and she drops the whole system and simply forwards the idea immediately.
So, Good, logical rules, with a good logical overseer is the key.

I agree that this would be best implemented in all forums.
And the minimum number of participants should be removed (for any forum), instead maybe they could introduce a passage stating that a poll will be prolonged if a certain number of participants isn’t reached. After prolonging it for another 14 days, they could then reject the idea if the minimum number is still not reached.

I wouldn’t like the format of the ideas to be mandatory (as in the DE forum, for example), because sometimes ideas got rejected just because they didn’t exactly follow the format.

Last I saw the info, the idea also has to get a minimum of 20 votes to even have a chance to get forwarded.

Also, never believe a mod or CM who says they will forward anything to the devs. Our CM on the US forum has told us the exact procedure for what happens with approved suggestions. Every two weeks, each forum CM picks the three best ideas that were approved on their forum, and then all the CMs get together and vote on all those ideas, and then only three of the approved ideas from all the forums combined get sent forward to the devs to consider. This game is in over 20 languages, and anywhere from 1 to 8 servers per language, plus the EN servers also in English, so 20+ forums for the game, and three suggestions, out of maybe 20 or 30 or more, get sent to the devs every two weeks. And people wonder why some things just seem to disappear or take forever to get implemented.

That’s why I think the US forum probably ranks highest in terms of transparency. I’ve checked the “ideas and suggestions” guidelines of all of the 12 forums you can find in the table, and none of them except for the US forum mentioned this procedure (I‘ve included the info in the table).
If they implement such a procedure, I expect all CMs to update their guideline and inform the players, but this obviously didn’t happen.

 

[DeletedUser3726]

The way how ideas are treated there appears to be quite strict.
I stopped putting efforts into suggesting something on the German forum because I feel like the ideas are mostly ignored anyway - no matter how much positive feedback they receive.

I‘ve been wondering what would need to be changed in order to improve the experience of the players and I think that - without actually changing anything in-game - it could really be improved
- by giving better (more detailed, not the standardized one-sentence-reply) explanations why something has been recjected by the developers (or the CMs)
- by making the whole process much more transparent (the US forum could serve as an example)
- by providing equal and relatively simple-to-use guidelines for all forums
- by avoiding unnecessary bureaucracy.

It does not make any sense to me why ideas proposed in the beta forum need 80% approval, while ideas proposed in the US need only >50%. Then again, you can bring up an idea in the EN forum (and also some others) and after a few posts only, a CM jumps in saying: “Great idea, I’ll forward it to the devs!” No lengthy discussion nor polls needed...

Tbh I think the idea is to give the player the feeling that these ideas and suggestions are taken seriously rather than the window dressing they are.

 

[Deleted User - 65634]

The whole voting thing might be more representative if there was an announcement when a poll is added, as sometimes a poll isn't added for a year and sometimes never.

 

[Hazel Caballus]

The whole voting thing might be more representative if there was an announcement when a poll is added, as sometimes a poll isn't added for a year and sometimes never.

If I remember correctly, players in the German forum have already asked for an in-game announcement of polls, but it was rejected by the CM because she said they aren’t allowed to post in-game announcements upon their discretion (they should be the same in all Elvenar markets). I doubt that an announcement in the forum would be of much help to make the polls more representative.

Maybe we should go ahead and ask our local CMs why they don’t inform players about the procedure (all CM voting on “forwarded” ideas, only top 3 get forwarded to the developers) and maybe also why the rules and guidelines in the “ideas and suggestions” section differ so much.
@Marindor Could you help us clarify this question for the beta forum?

 

[DeletedUser626]

Hi everyone,

Sure, I will try to clarify some things for you. I'm not sure if it's giving everyone the answers they'd like to hear, as everyone has their own opinion, but maybe it helps to clear some things up.

First of all, it's very important to keep in mind that Elvenar as a game is still very much in active development in the relatively early phase of its life cycle. This doesn't mean it's a brand new game, but it means we're still planning to keep it going for years and years to come, developing new content et cetera. That is the good news. The bad news is that for such games the room to implement suggestions from the community is very small. A lot of things for the upcoming years are already planned and worked on, and the company has certain goals that we want to achieve, meaning our development team can't derive too much from the path that is planned. In games that are not so popular anymore, or are already very established and have transitioned from their active development stage to a retainment stage, there is a lot more room to implement community ideas (as there's not much else on the planning anymore), but Elvenar is not a game like that.

That being said, we do try to listen to our players and implement suggestions that have a big support base in some way or another. Some things are easy (and therefore not time consuming) to implement as quick improvements and other things take considerably more time and need to be planned. This is not always possible and based on the priority our game team gives to suggested ideas, can take a lot of time. It can also happen that suggestions don't get implemented in exactly the proposed way, but in an altered form or as part of a bigger overhaul.

As you probably aready noticed, we have a big worldwide player base with a lot of people and a lot of opinions/ideas. Let's say that each game market receives only 5 ideas per week, that means our game team would be bombarded with around 100 ideas per week to sort through. As this is just plain impossible, we have thought of a way to filter out the really good ideas which have a lot of support, so that the chance of the things we forward being implemented is as big as possible. Since each market and player base is different, it's up to the CM's of their markets to think of a way to filter out the best ideas to forward. Here on Beta, as you probably know, I archive the ideas of which I already know they have no chance of being implemented, and the ones that do seem feasible get a poll for 2 weeks, needing a minimum of 20 individual voters of which 80% must be in favor. You can of course debate about the minimum number of voters or the percentages, but so far I think it does its job and these numbers fit our number of active forum users. If we would announce polls ingame, the number of voters of course goes up, but that also means we'd have to raise the minimum required amount of voters, as otherwise the whole "filter system" wouldn't work anymore. With these numbers, the ideas that are really urgent or have a lot of support generally make it through the poll. Of course there are examples of polls that had a lot of positive votes but not enough voters to go through, but on the other hand some polls had over 40 voters, so I think if something is really important, it will get enough votes in these 2 weeks anyhow. You sometimes see people asking their Fellowships to help with the voting as well and that's perfectly fine. That way we are sure that the ideas that we forward are at least of high quality and supported enough to go to the next stage.

That next stage is indeed the CM voting round. Each 2 weeks all forwarded ideas are listed and each CM gets the chance to give 1, 2 or 3 points to an idea, based on how much that idea is relevant/asked for on their market. This again means that the first filtering is very important, as it's not our goal to have 50 ideas listed each 2 weeks and only give points to 3 of them. We'd rather have a list of only 4-5 ideas that really have a lot of support from our players, and choose between those. One important note here is that when an idea doesn't get enough points in this phase, the CM's are welcome to put it on the list in upcoming rounds as well if it's still relevant for their markets. So an idea is not lost forever if it doesn't get enough points in 1 round. Of course, if we put it on the list for several weeks in a row and it never gets enough points, you can ask yourself if it's worth to keep putting it on the list, as something that's very much alive on 1 market can be no issue at all in the rest of the world. We want to be sure that the changes we implement can count on a lot of support from the players.

As said, the 3 ideas with the top votes are forwarded to our game team (which means the game team basically gets 3 new ideas per game sprint to investigate, which is a lot more reasonable than the 100 mentioned before). For this number they can at least make the time to properly think them through. It doesn't automatically mean they will also be implemented, but they will at least be investigated and tested in terms of technical possibilities, are they in line with our goals, are they in line with the future we have planned for the game, is this the way we want to go et cetera. If they are and everyone is convinced it's a really good idea to implement, they will be planned either on itself or as part of a bigger change, and based on the priority and the planning that can be within a year, but also over a few years. For example: if we already know that we want to overhaul the quest system in 2023, ideas that have to do with that will probably be scheduled for that timeframe.

So tldr: There is very little room to implement (especially the more complex) ideas in this stage of the game, but we do forward the ideas that get the most support from our players over multiple markets, and the game team takes it from there.

As said, probably not everyone will be happy with the system we use and everyone will have their own opinion on it, but hopefully this explanation at least makes the process more clear and gives a bit of an idea why it is like it is.

 

[Deleted User - 60111]

@Marindor Since we have no way of knowing what has and hasn't been submitted from the regions all over the world, could we please get a list of those 3 "winners" so that we don't waste time on repetition?

 

[Deleted User - 76151]

I second @SoggyShorts request.
Put up a separate part on the forum as read only were we as beta testers can see what requests are already put to the devs.
Maybe some beta player comes with an elegant solution for a request that is also easy to implement by the devs.

 

[Deleted User - 76151]

After thinking about this situation for a while, I see a flaw in the system of the CMs who first decide which requests are passed to the developers.
The Beta part nevertheless aims to detect errors and problems within the game and to report them as quickly as possible so that they can be fixed before they end up in the live versions of the game.
As a reward for finding those mistakes, we get a small amount of diamonds and can try out the new developments first.

Shouldn't it also be the case that the improvement requests of the Beta players should be given priority and if players encounter the same problems across the different game versions, they should be sent directly to the developers without 1 CM in between.

 

[Hazel Caballus]

@Marindor Thank you very much for taking your time to give us a more in-depths explanation of the mechanisms underlying the processing of the proposed ideas and suggestions. It is highly appreciated
To make things a bit more transparent for the players and also to allow for a better understanding, it would be great if you could include this info

That next stage is indeed the CM voting round. Each 2 weeks all forwarded ideas are listed and each CM gets the chance to give 1, 2 or 3 points to an idea, based on how much that idea is relevant/asked for on their market. This again means that the first filtering is very important, as it's not our goal to have 50 ideas listed each 2 weeks and only give points to 3 of them. We'd rather have a list of only 4-5 ideas that really have a lot of support from our players, and choose between those. One important note here is that when an idea doesn't get enough points in this phase, the CM's are welcome to put it on the list in upcoming rounds as well if it's still relevant for their markets. So an idea is not lost forever if it doesn't get enough points in 1 round. Of course, if we put it on the list for several weeks in a row and it never gets enough points, you can ask yourself if it's worth to keep putting it on the list, as something that's very much alive on 1 market can be no issue at all in the rest of the world. We want to be sure that the changes we implement can count on a lot of support from the players.

in the guidelines for the “ideas and suggestions“ section. The info would be easier to find and not all of the players who propose ideas will read this thread.

Shouldn't it also be the case that the improvement requests of the Beta players should be given priority and if players encounter the same problems across the different game versions, they should be sent directly to the developers without 1 CM in between.

The bad news is that for such games the room to implement suggestions from the community is very small.

@Bor de Wolf 1965 As an additional explanation, when you consider the voting criteria applied to beta vs. other markets, you can clearly see that beta players are by no means granted any expert status, at least with regard to the ideas and suggestions they propose. You could ask for a slight improvement of the criteria, but this kind of request would never be considered.

[Edit: This does not mean that I‘m against your suggestion and I don’t intend to say that beta players would not deserve being granted some kind of expert status or a prioritized processsing of their ideas. This is just how I perceive the situation as it currently is and based on that, our chances of changing something.]

Regarding @SoggyShorts and yours suggestion to report on the top 3 ideas every two weeks: Even though this would be great to know, I think this would take to much efforts for @Marindor and might even be considered a company secret. I think it would involve less efforts and also be of a lot of help to the players if @Marindor marked the ideas which have been forwarded to the CMs but failed to reach the top 3 position as “rejected by the CMs”, so that players don’t need to wonder what happened to their ideas and continue with some false hope that things are going to change. This way players could also identify which ideas need to be improved before they could be presented again. Of course, as an idea can be send to the CM voting many times in theory, it makes sense to mark only those ideas as rejected of which @Marindor knows that he does not intend to present them again. I know it would also involve some extra effort, but given the small number of ideas which get proposed here and pass the beta voting criteria, I hope it would be feasible.

 

[Deleted User - 60111]

@Hazel Caballus
Sorry, but that makes no sense.
As marindor said there can be 100 ideas and only 3 get forwarded- therefore is would be much easier to tell us the 3 winners and not list the 97 losers. (Although both would be nice)
And giving us that list of 3 every couple weeks only takes a minute. It's got to be a simple cut and paste of the list.
The "company secret" objection is quite silly as well since all our suggestions are public and the 3 ideas are only forwarded, not even accepted by the devs nor any timeline given for acting on them if ever.

 

[Hazel Caballus]

As marindor said there can be 100 ideas and only 3 get forwarded- therefore is would be much easier to tell us the 3 winners and not list the 97 losers. (Although both would be nice)

The huge difference is that you’d have to dig through all 22 (or was it 23) forums to get an overview of all ideas forwarded.
I honestly don’t mind your suggestion and I believe it was great if it was implemented.

I just think we’ll have more chances asking for a small piece of cake than asking for the whole cake, given that we weren’t even officially informed about the existence of the cake before.

 

[Deleted User - 60111]

I just think we’ll have more chances asking for a small piece of cake than asking for the whole cake...

I assume there's a list that's already typed up that @Marindor and the other CMs look at in order to vote on them. Or a Google sheet. Or whatever.
Regardless, sharing or copy&pasting that list is the work of mere seconds. It would probably be more work to give us less than all of the information.

To be fair I don't know how they are doing it exactly, but if it were me a simple google sheet where CMs each place 3 ideas along one axis and their votes (1-3 points) along the other makes sense.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Also, as helya is telling us on the US forum, you also have to deal with the more active forums that generate more than 3 vote-approved suggestions in the two-week period. At that point it is purely up that a forum's CM to pick 3 for all the CMs to then vote on, while the other suggestions have to sit and wait another two weeks. So it really is almost pointless for there to be more than three approved suggestions every two weeks. And on the most active forums, that really slows down the ideas.

 

[DeletedUser3726]

@Marindor Since we have no way of knowing what has and hasn't been submitted from the regions all over the world, could we please get a list of those 3 "winners" so that we don't waste time on repetition?

Wouldn't that amount to some accountability? I'm not sure inno is really prepared to allow themselves to be accountable for their decisions (or lack thereof). I certainly got the impression they'd happily stamp TH;DT (too hard;didn't try) on most suggestions.