these are user forums. the Devs do look at them and do occasionally comment in them. but if you want a personal response from them on something then submit a comment to them by the trouble ticket process.
you can identify a dev from others easily. simply look at the release post for any event. or look at the few, very few times they personally comment on a user topic like http://forum.codenameentertainment.com/?thread_id=12585

multiple players have shown interest before in suggestions that havent been made still. more than one occasion it was the same suggestion over time. obvious a lot would like it but nothing ever happens....feels more like you just make what you want and claim to listen.

@ ihatethisfing: While players are welcome to make suggestions, the game is still our design, and only outstanding suggestions will be considered.

As well, there's a balance between adding new content and improving features, and new content does take priority.

> We do note them all on our internal list.

With all due respect, but that (especially in combination with usually not responding) makes it look to your players like nothing is being done with their suggestions. Is that really the impression you want to create? If people think there's no point in sharing suggestions, chances are a lot of good ideas won't be shared at all.

An additional problem: if there is a popular suggestion you (for whatever reason) decide not to implement, there's no feedback to players, so they keep requesting it (and keep hoping for it!). This total lack of feedback causes false expectations.

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> If only one player wants something, that's one voice out of tens of thousands of users.

The forum software seems incapable of showing the number of accounts, but I sure get the impression there's at most a hundred or so people on here. Looking at the one hundred most recent threads, a whopping *eight* managed to get ten or more posts; exactly one made it beyond twenty posts. I have no idea how you envision using this forum to determine the opinions of thousands of players.

And even if there was thousands of people here, any idea older than one month cannot gather further support: "Sorry, threads that have not been updated within the last month cannot be revived."... Unless you're implicitly saying that any suggestion not implemented after one month is never going to happen, that is a further problem with using this forum to gather and discuss suggestions.

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> If multiple players comment, then we know there's some interest in a feature being improved in some way.

ihatethisfing wrote:
> multiple players have shown interest before in suggestions that havent been made still

and got this for a response:
> While players are welcome to make suggestions [..] only outstanding suggestions will be considered.

So, which is it; if multiple players comment, that's a solid reason to look into it, or no matter how many players want something, if you do not consider it "outstanding", it won't even get considered?

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> As well, there's a balance between adding new content and improving features, and new content does take priority.

Excuse me? If I have a car with brakes that don't work when I'm going too fast, the radio is locked to one station and the tires need to be inflated every other day, installing a cool new spoiler sure looks cool, but it is definitely not my first priority. If you're only adding features (which won't be flawless on the first try), you're only adding stuff which needs improvement... but will never get it. Every time you update, there will be more things which need fixing, and the game will gain content... but become just that little more frustrating (read: less fun) to play.

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A game I spent far too much time on uses a separate site (read: no development time needed) for feedback: https://www.uservoice.com/ It allows people to post ideas, discuss them (if one person has a good idea, another person can further improve it), vote on them (within limits, to ensure people only vote for the very best ideas) and let the developer provide feedback ("this has been implemented!", but also "no sorry, this is not going to happen, because X, Y and Z"). Yes, it is something which you need to monitor at least a little (then again, so is this forum) and people will only use it if they feel you're actually doing something with their suggestions, but if you do, it's a really useful tool.

> I guess you do not know that if there is something you like you can post a whole new topic rehashing it and even point to the prior topic with a url.

Most forums disallow the creation of duplicate threads, especially when the original has been locked. However, I just checked and you are right, the rules for this forum have no such limitation. Good point!

[edit]
But the "Basic Posting Guidelines" do say: "Search for threads that address your topic before posting a new thread.". On the one hand that strongly implies "... and then post there instead of creating a new thread", but on the other hand it utterly fails to address what to do when that is not possible...
[/edit]


That having been said:
- Even if a workaround exists, the current approach still seems counter-productive.
- You commented on just about the least important sentence in the entire post. :-s (Then again, I was primarily hoping for a response from the devs themselves.)

> This has become more of an argument than a discussion.

I provide a lot of reasons *why* the current approach, in my opinion, does not work very well. It is a pity that you do not respond to even a single one of those reasons with a counterargument (as would be expected in a discussion). If you disagree with me, fine, that's perfectly okay, but that's no reason to sweep my views under the rug.

> Every time you post [..] I've read through your comments and many of your points

Are you sure you're not confusing me with somebody else? I've got a grand total of seven (now eight) posts on this forum.

> The devs told you their piece and all you did was nitpick and demean them.

The phrase you're looking for is "disagree with them". I guess if you absolutely insist, there could be a sliver of "demean" in my response to "new content does take priority [over improving features]", but in my mind that was merely being straight to the point, or at worst blunt.

> you react with "Okay, yeah, but here's why I'm still right and you're still wrong" instead of
> putting any effort into understanding the other side.

No, I reacted with "here's a clarification of my views". Heck, to put it in your terminology: "to help you understand my side of things".

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But apart from all of that, what are your thoughts on what this thread was originally about?

> I don't know where you were looking, but Erika replies to threads all the time.

While that may very well have been a rhetorical question, let's answer it anyway, because it illustrates my point very well. I was actually looking in this very forum itself, "Feature Requests/Suggestions": http://forum.codenameentertainment.com/?forum_id=44 In the twenty most recent threads (approximately six weeks), there's a grand total of four posts by Erika (two in this thread, two in "More info about missions"). No other devs made even a single post. So that is only two posts by a dev this year when I started this thread at the end of January. Neither "responding to one thread in twenty" nor "making two posts per month" is what I would call "being very active".

Actually, I'm not asking for "a solid yes or no on every suggestion". But when the same suggestion keeps coming back, a quick response "we've thought about it, but this is not going to be implemented" (optionally with a short explanation why not) would be very helpful. When it gets posted here multiple times, it will come up in chat even more often. Having a page to link to "sorry, not gonna happen, here's the page where the devs said so" prevents people from hoping for something which won't happen. (And at least personally, I find it much easier to live with something stupid when I know why it's there.)

Of course it would be great if every once in a while there's also a "That sounds interesting, I'll talk to the rest of the team about it!", but yes, that would create an obligation for a follow-up post a few days later. On the plus side, it would be an awesome way of *showing* ("show, don't tell", if you can forgive using that adage in a completely different context) you are using the provided feedback.

If it is indeed the dev's policy to (in principle; exceptions possible) never respond, I feel it would be good to let people know about that; for instance in a pinned thread. If your reason against "maybe" is that people will misunderstand, then just think how easy it is to misunderstand no information whatsoever.

If time constraints are an issue, Uservoice (or a similar approach) comes in handy. For context: I know that solution from a game developed by a single person... in his spare time. That way, it is possible to get good suggestions while using only a minimal amount of dev time. It also shows people their suggestions are actually being used, thus encouraging people to submit their ideas. I for one have a laundry list of suggestions for this game. You can't reasonably expect me to spend hours writing everything out in detail if I thoroughly doubt anybody will ever bother to even read it, let alone it standing a snowball's chance in hell of actually being implemented. If other people feel the same way, countless suggestions (very possibly including some very good ones) will never reach the devs and simply go to waste.

Edit:
Fix typo "read" -> "reach" in the very last sentence.

> Then go make your own game.

How does me making a random other game help this game?

> Or work on the development team of someone already making a game.

Never worked (as in, got paid cash) for work on any games. I did do development work (both paid and unpaid) on various other kinds of software.

> You seem to have all the answers, so put them to use.

Two seconds after submitting my previous post I figured "Oh oops, should've put a note in there thanking them for switching from the hostile 'just mute this thread' to a constructive tone. Ah well, I'll do it next time."... But then this is your next post? :( Why the sudden switch back to "glass half empty"? I reread my previous post two more times and there's just nothing in there which is the least bit incendiary, insulting or mean-spirited!?

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If any dev happens to see this; I would still very much appreciate if you could share your views on a post earlier in this thread: http://forum.codenameentertainment.com/?thread_id=23351#84992 The discussion between me and Animenut kinda buried it.