So for those who are unaware, Terraria has a very large community, and within that community has a lot of mods in which those have pretty large communities.
Specifically for the calamity mod, it has it’s own discord server with these 3 channels
The suggestions_posting channel is for posting suggestions, while the discussion channel is for discussing suggestions in the posting channel, but it’s also for discussing suggestions before they are being put in the posting channel.
I might come up with a neat suggestion, but instead of posting it instantly, I post it in there and ask for advice on if it’s good enough to go in there, or if I could add something or change how I worded something.
The voting channel are suggestions approved by a mod, and are put in there by a bot, you’ll be able to vote on them
Do you think we should adopt a similar system for the Unturned discord and these forums to improve the quality of suggestions for U4?
Making suggestions wouldn’t be more difficult per se, because you’re still free to post them in the discussion channel and the posting channel, them getting approved is a different story though
Having people suggest changes and going through a cabinet of high-ranking community members was the idea behind the 3.0 Update Cabinet, and to put it shortly it was a bit of a failure. Mainly because it got created and operated during the 3.0/UII transition phase where Nelson basically said that 3.0 is in the community’s hands now and all his time will be put towards UII. I’m sure it could be done with a lot more interaction from Nelson, but overall what brought the cabinet down wasn’t because of Nelson’s inactivity with dealing with us.
If I remember, the cabinet was a very very private server right?
It’s a bit different from this system, the members of the cabinet could be present in the Unturned discord and approve suggestions themselves and have it move on from the posting area to the voting area
Cabinet was available to the public for a while as the ‘observer’ role, which gave you permissions to submit suggestions to the cabinet and discuss among themselves and with Cabinet members. It was quite sizable with about 150 or so observers, mostly RA members because somebody forgot to close the link they were allowed to create when we took in the first wave of observers. IIRC there were two waves but you’d need to talk with Wakko about why that eventually stopped.
The Cabinet also didn’t move topics to a different channel, we took ideas we thought would fit well and submitted them directly to Nelson. Not to say that the larger community isn’t as dedicated to the game as we were but there’s always been a divide between the PvP-oriented majority and those that would rather the game stick to it’s roots. Implementing a voting system like this will certainly drive a divide within the community, just as the Steam Discussion Forums have shown with an overabundance of PvP ideas and almost nothing that fits the direction Nelson has said he wants UII to go in.
The system in the calamity discord doesn’t approve suggestion based on biases, but rather if the suggestion is well written and follows the suggestion guideline (No specific recipes, no entirely new bosses, no suggestions on planned content)
Also hasn’t Nelson already decided on sticking to the games roots and making U4 survival oriented? A guideline could be implemented to remind people to understand what nelson’s direction for the game is
Instead of an entire discord server, a role for veterans in this community could be given out and these people would approve of suggestions to take them to the voting stage
No. Beyond any reasonable doubt, no. You are effectively handing control over what should be allowed and accepted into the game to a coterie of members; if no suggestion without their approval makes it to the consideration stage, then you have created an entirely unfair selection process. As it stands, Nelson’s relatively informal method of perusing suggestions himself is the best option available to the community.
Not quite, this is merely to filter out low-effort suggestions. Isn’t it rude to make a suggestion to a developer who puts his blood,sweat,tears in a game, that doesn’t even have proper grammar? Let alone be descriptive, coherent, persuasive, etc? Why should Nelson even cosnider suggestions that don’t even have a second thought? Why should he take suggestions from younger people who aren’t even old enough to be on discord or this forum at all?
Well, this assumes that there is a bias among the team who approves these suggestions, while that is possible, the point is not to filter out ideas, just low-effort suggestions.
Actually, you can scratch the entire requirement of a suggestion needing to be within Unturneds theme, do you want space shuttles and different planets in Unturned? Ok, did you put enough effort in said suggestion? Yes? It should definitely be approved for voting.
The voting doesn’t even need to be the final decision, if something gets an overwhelming response, it doesn’t mean Nelson is forced to follow that response, he can do the opposite for his own reasons
High effort doesn’t necessarily mean words words and more words, because sometimes it’s just not necessarily or even a waste of time to have words, words and more words. Just get too the point, and describe the reason why it needs to be implemented, and have it proofread a lot
idk if we really need more than what we have right now, and like amaros said, the 3.0 cabinet went downhill pretty badly and repeating that would be a mistake
To clarify for those unfamiliar with the cabinet: it was a community-run group curating suggestions. Anyone can submit or discuss suggestions for either game regardless.
In the medium term I would like to develop a feedback server integrated into both games. For example, something along the lines of OSRS polling. Could be especially helpful for prioritizing features.
That is what I was trying to clarify: the cabinet was not an official group. I tried to reply to all the cabinet suggestions because it represented a wider group having their voice heard. Similarly I try to reply to or address as much feedback as possible regardless of status. For suggestions emailed directly to me I recommend posting on the forum in order to encourage discussion.
Y’know, I may be on the topic of preventing low effort posts, but whatever the case is, whenever a post is low effort or not - it could still spark discussion, and isn’t that the most important thing when it comes to suggestions? People discussing ideas, offering up new ideas, tweaking already existing ideas.
The way forums are structured are pretty much perfect for that, so maybe a more elaborate suggestion system isn’t needed. Discord is a bit different though
I think that systematic design seems better for closed groups or community projects. Forum seem to do already a good job with suggestions. Good ones get a consistent discussion going promoting interest while the panned topics would get dismissed easily.
Regarding Discord I didn’t think the suggestions channel wasn’t really that much observed by SDG, so like I only see it as a discussion starter to be talked about in the UII general channel. Not sure why we still have a weekly cooldown, but that would probably make more sense if it’s actually taken seriously. Otherwise it’s just a ‘Throw in an idea’ rather than ‘Suggest a well-thought out idea to implement into the game’
The timer wasn’t my idea, but yeah there’s a cooldown between posts because some others say ‘It’s to prevent low effort suggestions from being spammed’ or something.
