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[Jiri Petru]

How is, just to name a few, Bloodline naming, Paint stuff, Sand Fluid Physics, Wildlife Repopulation, Ceramics and Cement, or a winch different takes on the same suggestion?

I haven't said these examples are bad, have I?

They all sound like valid suggestions and as I've said, I wouldn't limit the broadness of suggestions nor forbid any. But what could happen is that someone comes up with a suggestion like "Better family mechanics" and links it to a topic with many sub-suggestions, one of which would be Bloodline naming. The larger suggestion would then steal most, if not all, voters of the smaller one. Which is good!

EDIT: Because more though-out systems and complex suggestions are more valuable than random one-liners.

EDIT2: Even better would be to delete the smaller suggestion after that, to prevent list bloating.

[RCIX]

But the problem is that then you can choose to vote for, say, the sand suggestion, or this "better family stuff" suggestion. A lot of people will think "i only have 3 votes, so i want to make them count -- i'll pick the giant suggestion!". That's what we're trying to avoid.

[Jiri Petru]

But the problem is that then you can choose to vote for, say, the sand suggestion, or this "better family stuff" suggestion. A lot of people will think "i only have 3 votes, so i want to make them count -- i'll pick the giant suggestion!". That's what we're trying to avoid.

Why? I don't see a problem in it.

[Draco18s]

I was working off what NW_Kohaku said - that simply voting for what you like best isn't the way to get things done, because some things wind up overrepresented.

Uh.  That's not a failing of voting for what you like, because it's a failing of people strategically voting and "some things wind up overrepresented."

That's my point.  If everyone votes for "things they like" somethings cannot end up "overrepresented."

[Jiri Petru]

But the problem is that then you can choose to vote for, say, the sand suggestion, or this "better family stuff" suggestion. A lot of people will think "i only have 3 votes, so i want to make them count -- i'll pick the giant suggestion!". That's what we're trying to avoid.

Why? I don't see a problem in it.

To elaborate: it's allright that people vote for the larger suggestion. It forces you, as a person who wants their suggestion to "win", to spend more time preparing your suggestion, to elaborate, to provide more details, to come up with a broader solution or system, to moderate a discussion where people send additional details, etc... generally to spend more time thinking about your suggestion before you post it, and making it more appealing than a one-liner. Which is a good thing! It's an eternal suggestion, and deserves more attention after all.


EDIT: For example, I think the reason why interface didn't get to the top 10 is there's no good eternal suggestion for it. There's quite a lot of too specific and minor ones I didn't even bother vote for, even though I'd like the interface to be improved, and then a single "Improve an interface" which is too general and doesn't even have a forum thread, so I can't decide whether it's good or bad (so apparently, more generic isn't always better). Now that we have the Interface Overhaul thread with a plenty of material, I'm confident a generic interface improvement would be a top suggestion.

[Silverionmox]

The trouble with generic vs. specific suggestions in the list is this: the generic suggestions will stay in the top ten until the game is finished. Smaller, specific suggestions can be implemented or ruled out by Toady, and that's it: room for new ideas.

Toady can work half a year on stuff from any thematic idea collection thread, and afterwards there will still be enough people that didn't see their specific favourite idea implemented to keep it in the top ten. Don't get me wrong, the thematic collections are the best the forum has to offer; but it's Toady who decides which arc to work on next. As such, they are not useful in an eternal suggestions ranking.

[Jiri Petru]

The trouble with generic vs. specific suggestions in the list is this: the generic suggestions will stay in the top ten until the game is finished. Smaller, specific suggestions can be implemented or ruled out by Toady, and that's it: room for new ideas.

Toady can work half a year on stuff from any thematic idea collection thread, and afterwards there will still be enough people that didn't see their specific favourite idea implemented to keep it in the top ten. Don't get me wrong, the thematic collections are the best the forum has to offer; but it's Toady who decides which arc to work on next. As such, they are not useful in an eternal suggestions ranking.

I dare to disagree. I think if you wiped the eternal suggestions now after DF2010 and then posted an "Improved Undeground", which used to be a very popular suggestion, it would't come up in the top 10. Sure, some people would still vote for it, which would mean they're still unhappy with the new underground, but most would propably move somewhere else. The same goes for the current top10 - i think most voters, seeing the list of features planned for the nearest future, would move to other suggestions. And those who'd remain in "adventurer skills" would basically be saying: "not enough adventurer skills, we want more!" Which is allright, but they'd hardly break the top 10.

EDIT: Looking at the current top 10, I think most of them would'n even get reopened when finished. I mean, you can't keep making "full graphics support", or "standing production orders" or "auto vein mining" or "workshop material selection" for all the eternity. Once they're done, they're done.

[Silverionmox]

"Standing production orders" and "automated vein mining" are good items for a pop poll: they can be implemented quickly, have a clearly defined goal and are easy to decide to vote for or not. While eg. improved mechanics is a virtually unlimited pool of suggestons (and an excellent thread, no complaint about that), and will therefore be in the list forever. Hell, it's even in there twice right now, sucking up votes that could have been informative. Such broad suggestions are really decisions about which arc to work on next. Those are too long-term: they make the list static and therefore of limited use (hence the talk about flushing the votes: a dynamic list doesn't need flushing). Small suggestions can be implemented quickly while solving something that was bothering a lot of players: that's efficient.

[RCIX]

The trouble with generic vs. specific suggestions in the list is this: the generic suggestions will stay in the top ten until the game is finished. Smaller, specific suggestions can be implemented or ruled out by Toady, and that's it: room for new ideas.

Toady can work half a year on stuff from any thematic idea collection thread, and afterwards there will still be enough people that didn't see their specific favourite idea implemented to keep it in the top ten. Don't get me wrong, the thematic collections are the best the forum has to offer; but it's Toady who decides which arc to work on next. As such, they are not useful in an eternal suggestions ranking.

I dare to disagree. I think if you wiped the eternal suggestions now after DF2010 and then posted an "Improved Undeground", which used to be a very popular suggestion, it would't come up in the top 10. Sure, some people would still vote for it, which would mean they're still unhappy with the new underground, but most would propably move somewhere else. The same goes for the current top10 - i think most voters, seeing the list of features planned for the nearest future, would move to other suggestions. And those who'd remain in "adventurer skills" would basically be saying: "not enough adventurer skills, we want more!" Which is allright, but they'd hardly break the top 10.

EDIT: Looking at the current top 10, I think most of them would'n even get reopened when finished. I mean, you can't keep making "full graphics support", or "standing production orders" or "auto vein mining" or "workshop material
selection" for all the eternity. Once they're done, they're done.

The real problem with large vs. small suggestions is this: it forces people to choose between an interesting large suggestion topic and an interesting small one. Since many people have your attitude, they'll probably pick the big one, because they both only have a few votes and think that few will pick the smaller ones anyway, so why waste a vote on something no one will notice..

[NW_Kohaku]

I've been saying this before, but I guess I should just repeat it again:

People should not just be throwing out every idea they have, hoping that if they throw out enough, maybe one of them might be listened to by accident.

People should be reading other people's suggestions, and then trying to improve them.  That is why "little suggestions" should really be encouraged to be intigrated with "big suggestions" - so that people can improve upon the suggestions of others.

[RCIX]

What do you suggest we do about suggestions that are just plain small -- like my Paint stuff idea? Do we toss them into a suggestion "bin" with other semi-related ideas, or just forget about them because they are too small? Moreover, Toady is the ultimate arbitrator of suggestions; if he doesn't mind small ones, then i will continue to post them.

[Jiri Petru]

I suggest not doing anything. Don't enforce any artificial limits on suggestions, let it flow naturally. Basically, the system is good as it is.

EDIT: And you can of course post small suggestion. Toady is known to read and note every single suggestion in this forum. The problem we're talking about is that small suggestions rarely get enough votes in the eternal voting system(*), which I still don't perceive as a "problem".

(*) Or do they? See "Automatic vein digging" which is a very small suggestion.


EDIT2: OK, actual small (narrow) suggestions now (defining "narrow" as something that can be explained by only a couple of words)
2. (869)   Standing production orders
4. (676)   Workshop Material Selection
5. (494)   Full graphics support
7. (403)   Auto-mining
8. (373)   Job Priorities
12. (220) Integrated Dwarf Foreman
16. (159) [Resolved] Designate Safe Area
17. (140) Yearly Status Report
18. (134) Allow engraving of constructions

That's about half of the TOP20! Where the heck is the problem? It almost sounds like you are complaining only because your small suggestions weren't those small suggestions that made it to the top.

[Silverionmox]

Full graphics support is not a small suggestion. For example, from the first post, "The possibility to define the graphics for workshops would be great." That is a small suggestion (and one we got in this release, incidentally). Full graphics support is a collection of ideas. Even though a part of it has been realized, you can't tell by looking at the suggestions ranking. Job priorities and integrated dwarf foreman aren't things either that can be implemented, bug-tested and released in, say, a week.

But there are good examples indeed, Designate safe area in particular: even though it was solved as part of a larger system (burrows), it can still be crossed off, while implementing one idea of a collection doesn't give that visible result.

Last but not least, having smaller goals is also nice for Toady, release cycles like the last that drag on forever are unpleasant.

[NW_Kohaku]

Last but not least, having smaller goals is also nice for Toady, release cycles like the last that drag on forever are unpleasant.

I don't know, I kind of liked having a stretch of time without updates.  It meant having an up-to-date wiki, rather than still having to go back to the last version of the wiki to see the information, and having to make an educated guess as to whether it still would hold true or not.  It meant having third-party tools that could focus on improving their services, rather than keeping up with changes.

Besides, I would kind of like to see Toady try to impliment full ideas rather than little snippets of ideas.  The new materials system, where just about all the materials had dummy entry values is an example of how Toady tends to put things in without really finishing implimenting them (or having cheesemakers without the ability to milk animals in the last version).  On the one hand, I don't mind Toady using players as beta testers, but at the same time, I think this player-driven rush to get whatever random scraps of code we can out of Toady, just to have the latest thing, is a rather negative aspect of this community.

Frankly, I'm still waiting and playing around with the edges of this game until I see a release in this version that I think is stable and well-supported enough to acutally play my first "real" fort of this version.

[Silverionmox]

I agree, I liked the stability too. One of the reasons this version is so unstable though, is the large sweeping updates in several systems at once (combat ànd materials, for example) that the bugs pile up and can't be fixed fairly quickly.

In a game so interwoven as DF, the loose ends are inevitable IMO. At least as long as it's in alpha. It isn't even in beta, where you can expect an unbalanced and unpolished but mostly complete game. With smaller changes, it's also easier to get feedback, to fix bugs and to see what specific parts work or not. Toady is free to cover a bunch of smaller suggestions in a big sweep (as he did with burrows and entrance dance/safety zone/military orders), though. And for those reasons small suggestions are a better fit for the eternal suggestion list.