Hi everyone,
We thought we would share some tips to help make sure that we are able to give all of your suggestions the consideration that they deserve.
Here are the tips I would recommend you keep in mind:
1) Be concise. There is a balance to be struck between giving everyone all the information you've thought up and being concise, but the more you can do to keep your suggestion short, the more likely it is to get read in detail.
2) Explain the why. There are a lot of suggestions that assume the reasoning behind their suggestion is self evident. It often isn't, and may be hard for us to understand the logic if it is not explained. Why do we need to raise/lower wizard generation? What's the pain point you experience, and why is solving that a net positive relative to keeping it, for gameplay considerations?
3) If you're suggesting a massive set of changes (e.g. posting something like the proposed changes looks like), have summary sections. This is related to the above -- if it's not clear why you're suggesting orcs get 1/7 elites and not wear underwear, it makes it harder for the reader to follow.
4) If you're suggesting multiple novel concepts, split them into multiple posts, or threads, as appropriate. Less omnibus changes, more piecemeal.
5) Have a title that summarizes what you're suggesting. Don't make it 'treemans' if you're suggesting a new treant race. Make it something like 'new race: treants'.
6) If you have a suggestion related to a current suggestion, make a new thread, don't piggyback on a current thread. As people debate suggestions in each thread, it's easy to overlook a related or similar suggestion if you simply add rather than creating a new thread.
At the moment, we would like to hear suggestions that focus on:
1) Introduce new mechanics. Things like kd-wide buffs that can be generated would be an example.
2) Revamp the dragon system. Read into that what you will; should there be more types? Should slaying them be different?
3) Introduce new races or personalities. There can be new, unique racial traits associated with these.
4) Encourage warring at progressively larger land sizes.
5) Unique game modes for Genesis or similar servers.
Things we definitely don't need suggestions about:
1) Speed. Yes, it's an issue. We're working on it.
2) Oops. Yes, it's an issue. We're working on it.
Other things we are thinking on, and constructive suggestions would be nice:
1) Balance between pure attackers, t/ms, and hybrids. We do feel like the appropriate balance involves an attacker able to nearly attack a samesize t/m twice at the start of conflict, so keep that in mind. Should there be modifications made to the ops success formula?
2) Dealing with significantly larger provinces. Are there enough tactics that exist today? Should they be modified? Which ones? Do these changes have other negative ramifications?
3) UI changes, including improvements to the espionage tab and ingame target finder. We have a plan in mind, but would like to hear about priority suggestions -- what are the main pain points, particularly if you're a recently new or returning player.
4) Notifications?
5) Making gameplay competitive options for less active players. Not that we should or would punish activity, but options that make it competitive if not 100% to login less.
We certainly won't comment on every thread, but we do read all threads and keep them in mind as we look at changes.
