Hello and thank you for this awesome game, I love seeing its evolution and am excited about its future growth.
I’d like to suggest implementing an in-game system where players are encouraged to vote on potential changes or submit feedback in exchange for small rewards (such as in-game cosmetic currency) or something similar.
Make the requirement for such voting that you must reach at least level 90, for example, to prevent spamming from new players or people with insincere intentions. And allow the votes to be cast only once per account, per voting block.
This would help get valuable feedback before considering potential changes, where you can evaluate community sentiment towards potential changes ahead of time.
An example of this could look like:
We’re considering adding a crafting glyph, which effect would you most rather see?
A) …
B) …
C) …
D) …
While the dev team may have considered A or D being implemented based on forum discussions and/or dev team testing, they discover that an overwhelming number of the community’s in-game voters chose option B. This may help shift the game in a direction that favors the positive response of the many over the few.
Just a suggestion, I’m sure you can make this idea better, but it is a seed to be planted.
No problem with your idea as a general concept… BUT…
Why put this in-game? that makes no sense and would be a waste of already limited dev resources.
The forums & voting in the feedback section serve this same/similar purpose.
The devs havent specifically been this direct in their questions of things they are considering but they do already discuss this in dev streams and on discord and within the confines of the CT programme … and they do read the forums and have implemented changes based on what people have discussed in the forums and via other channels.
A democratic approach to software development is not, in my experience, a valid way to do things… Someone has to make decisions and it cannot always be a majority rule approach especially when the repercussions of the decisions can have far reaching consequences which those voting do not understand… Giving the public/players control of what the devs decide to implement through voting for features is imho a slippery slope to a catastrophe… At most, I would think that players could prioritise (within reason) what they want in the game next but beyond that would be a mistake.
EDIT - The game is a concept/ideas and brainchild of the creators & developers and its their project, their baby so to speak. They have a vision for what they want to do (for better or worse) and imho, allowing players to directly influence things to the level you describe, is not something I would want if I were them… Sure, they would be stupid to ignore feedback, but its still their game… not ours… even if we are having fun playing it… and ultimately its their decisions as to what they do or dont implement and how they do it.
