First off, well done on a successful launch, Devs. I'm enjoying ES2 again, The Unfallen are a great addition. I am especially loving the UI enhancements, the faction voices, and the myriad of first colony videos. I expect additional changes to occur with the game over the next months, as balance passes come, and general improvements begin to take shape. This however leads me to a rather head scratching question. The marketing of the Dev studio, which is often linked to the production of the game, has been one of a community focused, community aware, community guided, Dev team. The major tool for justifying this perspective is The Unfallen themselves. This is a strong argument, given this was a fan generated concept. However, i have a question and a perspective that might put all of that in doubt. 

"What is the purpose or intended aim, of the Ideas page?"

Just give that some thought. Sure one might explain its purpose is so people can express their ideas, and therefore influence the Devs decisions. Ok sure, that's a good argument for its existence. However out of the 673 ideas created, only 2 have been actually implemented, 25 as "green lit", 6 ruled as "must haves", with only 16 being considered as "nice to have", leaving 10 wish-listed. 59 ideas. In addition to what could be reasonably labeled, "Dev favored", a small portion of the ideas have been ruled as "out of vision", which i personally see as rather contradictory to the marketing. It rings like a philosophical argument for free-will, trying to justify itself in tandem with a divine plan, where all has been written. Only 19 ideas were labeled expressly as out of vision. This mathematically leaves 88.3% of all community generated ideas, being ignored. A bit of a disconnect there. On one hand we have the message that our perspectives are seriously considered, but when it gets down to it, the numbers show our ideas appear to be almost entirely ignored, or ruled to not be what you envisioned with the game.

I will of course admit, there are ideas which seem to be, meh... Some of the ideas might not be that great. But to have an ideas page where the acceptance rate (8.7%), or frankly even the decline rate (2.8%) is so low, i am wondering why it exists at all. Do the Devs actually pay any serious attention to it? Despite this rather nagging question i hope to see answered, I intend to use the ideas page as i desire it to work. I will post my ideas there in the hopes that they get considered, or preferably get implemented. I just need to be upfront about this, those numbers do not inspire confidence.

I mean no harsh emotions with this, but i am honestly curious about what kind of response this question will generate. 

Thanks

-Gray.

What percentage do you think would make sense? 8.7% is actually pretty high. 

Dragar wrote:

What percentage do you think would make sense? 8.7% is actually pretty high. 

When focusing on responses, I would honestly expect at least 30-50% receiving something. Remember that i am only talking about a simple defining of categories. I don't think that value is unreasonable at all. 8.7% of accepted ideas is nice and all, but still with 88.3% without categories, most of which have been around for months, i just don't think the engagement is there. While the Devs are very clearly active on the forums, i am expressly drawing focus to the Ideas page. Personally, the ideas page seems unimportant. 

The developers are a small team, so they can only focus on certain ideas to implement which is probably why it's such a small positive-engagement rate. They have a game to build, test, play, and sell. It's not a sandbox game where anything goes.

There is, of course, the fact that a lot of these ideas are just nonsense ideas which add nothing of value to the game. Gradual terraforming, ship texture editor, "badass turrets"?! - a lot of this is just inane "Wouldn't it be cool if...?" ideas with no real substance that could be added to the game. And there's got to be at least 30% of these ideas which are "Change the UI so that it's like this..."

If every idea that was presented had some substance to it, and/or if every one was unique, I could see a higher percentage being approved/green lit/positively approached. Personally I think you're asking for a lot more than what this small group of people can provide. There's a lot of forum curation to dig through while also doing their job of actually creating a game. Engagement from these folks at their level is high, even if your perception of their idea approval isn't.

And don't expect the devs to answer at weekend and worry about. From my experience they seem to have a good "labor union" in France - weekend is holy.  :)

Oleary wrote:

What's the percentage at other development studios? Are you including the vote system in your percentage? Are you including VIP feedback/ideas into your percentage? Those are three questions that come to mind, but I'm sure there are more out there. 

Lies, damn lies and statistics...

To those questions, the immediate response would be, i wouldn't know, all of those questions are red herrings anyway. Clearly, i am focusing specifically on the Ideas page of one company.

Groo wrote:

And don't expect the devs to answer at weekend and worry about. From my experience they seem to have a good "labor union" in France - weekend is holy.  :)

Indeed.

jimsurvak wrote:

The developers are a small team, so they can only focus on certain ideas to implement which is probably why it's such a small positive-engagement rate. They have a game to build, test, play, and sell. It's not a sandbox game where anything goes.

There is, of course, the fact that a lot of these ideas are just nonsense ideas which add nothing of value to the game. Gradual terraforming, ship texture editor, "badass turrets"?! - a lot of this is just inane "Wouldn't it be cool if...?" ideas with no real substance that could be added to the game. And there's got to be at least 30% of these ideas which are "Change the UI so that it's like this..."

If every idea that was presented had some substance to it, and/or if every one was unique, I could see a higher percentage being approved/green lit/positively approached. Personally I think you're asking for a lot more than what this small group of people can provide. There's a lot of forum curation to dig through while also doing their job of actually creating a game. Engagement from these folks at their level is high, even if your perception of their idea approval isn't.

The last paragraph of yours i feel is the most important. I am 100% on board with this. I even admit in my first post that there are ideas which are, rather pointless. But again, i am only talking about what is categories on one page, on one part of the forums. I think some people might over estimate the amount of work i am suggesting. I'm not finger waving at how much gets actually implemented. It is understandable that with the whole "out of vision" free-will contradiction, that many ideas would be avoided as it doesn't fit their idea for the game. Specifically, I'm drawing attention to how few ideas seem to even be considered for classification. My point remains one of doubt as to the usefulness of the ideas page.