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[Exploration] Firefall Feedback System

Sir ArmaMalum·8/17/2014, 6:17:46 PM·6 votes·1,865 views

I'm a gamer. And as a gamer I play many more games than just League, as well as many more forums than just League's. So I'm going to highlight some features of other gaming forums that I thought were brilliant. Naturally I'm not saying "Put this in, Rito Plz!", but exploring how different developers handled the problems presented in a forum platform can not only be a good exercise, but can be excellent springboards to other ideas.

So without further ado, here is Firefall's User Feedback system: http://feedback.firefallthegame.com/forums/115461-firefall-feedback

To summarize, here's how it works:

  1. To submit an idea you finish the sentence "I think you should....", this acts as your idea's title. Now, the brilliant part is that as you type in your idea, it automatically searches for similar ideas. Meaning that it if someone suggested a close idea before you it allows a user to instead support that idea instead of starting from scratch.
  2. You explain your idea as you would a normal post. Add attachments possibly, mostly normal.
  3. Once done, you choose how many votes you want to push behind it, 1 2 or 3 votes. Here's the thing though you have a limited number of votes. 10 to be exact. Votes define the order of visibility in the main feedback page (think "best" in the Boards). Your votes can also be used on other people's ideas, but once you're out you can no longer vote.
  4. The top few ideas will be looked over by Red5 Designers and closed. This doesn't mean they're going to do it or that they're not going to do it, just that it's been seen and considered. The thread is still visible as you enter a new idea, so you can know you're potential idea has indeed been looked at. Once a thread that you have voted on has been closed, you get the voted you spent on it back.

What do you guys think about this system?

Edit: Red5 Devs do also comment on some ideas and these comments are shown within the idea listings. Comments like "We want to do this." and "Good idea, but here are the current problems..." have come up.

Edit2: There are also tags that can be attached to closed threads. I have seen "Planned" and "Under review" so far.

19 Comments

Hyrum Graff8/17/2014, 6:29:33 PM1 votes

What happens if a thread is never closed? Do you just run out of votes? Or do you have to withdraw them from one thread to get them for another? Do you get new votes every day? If a thread is closed, does that mean it increases your max number of votes?

Phoneixflare8/18/2014, 12:12:29 AM1 votes

I approve. +1

Hyrum Graff8/18/2014, 2:59:59 AM1 votes

In general, I think this works well for a feedback system, but less well for a community.

Daen8/18/2014, 4:23:24 PM1 votes

I'm on the fence with this suggestion. I think it's really really cool to have an officialized (makin' up words) system like this, but I don't know if it's something that would really gel with Riot and with the League community. This sort of system seems like something that would need to be present from the outset, and fitting it into League's community would be tough.

One of the big reasons I feel that way is Riot is really reluctant to discuss things they are working on or even plan to work on until those things are well under construction. It might be bittersweet to see that Riot has taken in this really popular suggestion and doesn't act on it for another year or more.

That being said, I think the idea of completing people's thoughts in suggestions would be really useful. I'm not sure how they would do it without requiring players to follow a specific format for submitting ideas, however.

Daen8/18/2014, 7:23:21 PM1 votes

So this just fleetingly occurred to me.

What if starting a thread title with a bracketed category (e.g. [Suggestion], [Bug], etc.) brought up a real-time list of frequently discussed topics in that particular board with that particular category?