Factorio Forums

I've been asked by the devs, if I can make some summary of ideas about the last weeks. And there is this need to avoid those ever ever repeating ideas. (https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=5&t=4574)

I'm now thinking about 2 weeks about that problem and this is my provisory result:

- Step #1: we need to cut the ideas out of the threads.
- Step #2: then we can systematically create a "list of suggestions".


Step #1

- someone reads a thread completely.
- he summarizes the ideas in very short words at the end
--- every idea from the thread becomes a special article with a heading "%summary%" or something (there are Plugins for phpbb which enable to tag articles. Several ways to do that. It is only important, that it can be found afterwards with not too much wrong hits and none is missing). In other words: I'm not sure, if that can work as described, cause if there are different opinions you need to write for every aspect a summary article. I let that open, let's just begin and see, what must be changed!
--- ideally it is one sentence, which describes the whole thread (dreaming )
--- it is here NOT important to compare anything. All what is needed is an objective short of the suggestion.

Target for that stage:
- the summary can be discussed again. Is it really objective? Some important thing forgotten?
- those summarized articles can be searched easily.
- all happens in the forum, everyone can discuss.
- "wrong summaries" are deleted, new written at the bottom of the thread.

Step #2

Now when there is no more discussion the work can continue in the wiki.

Wiki, cause that is really open and collaborative work.

- for every idea (=summary articles or whatever) we make an entry into one ore more lists (just copy the summary text).
- in this list we can move the things, which belongs together together, put them on other pages, link exactly and all the stuff, where a wiki is a good use.
- cause that is open, everybody can move the topics, add links, bring things together.

Targets
- we have a validated list of ideas, that are ordered in some way(s)
- the devs have the input to see, what is wanted.




What do you think? Is that useful? Too much work?

I think that may work if you do it the over way put topics in the wiki like:
Transport network
Crafting network
Logistic network
Circuit network
Liquid network
Electric network
Railway network
Robotic network
then brake them down in to sub-topics.

then someone look for posts in the forum for the ideas on that sub-topics.

what do you think ssilk

Hehe. These "networks" I wanna get rid off. The problem with them is, that it comes from v0.4-v0.6 where the game was quite different to now and they made sense..

Now they are just unlogical and make problems to be understood fast and correct.

My current idea is to make an own page with subpages. And from the topics I like Khyrons current points here https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=4806

But I don't say no, for the start this order is quite familiar and of course useful.

Though I have no opinion or idea about step 2, I think how helpful step 1 will turn out to be, will depend how abstract you wish to keep the summaries.

I'll take the balaning thread "Laser Turrets need upkeep" as example, since it's one in which I posted. (Any discussion of balancing is a suggestion about balancing)

There are several, completly objective, summaries you could extract from this one. For one, the title, itself, summarizes the OP quite well. The part of the discussion in which I was involved, can be summarized as "solar is too cheap", "crafting of solar should be gated by oil" (my own pet-suggestion!), "accumulators should be nerfed" and/or "piercing bullets needs cost reduction", amongst many others. If you go with all of them, for every discussion about suggestions/balancing, it'll do more harm than good, imho, since it will be overly polluted with many different takes on similiar problems.

Another, more abstract way to summarize this thread could be "Gameplay emerging from interactions between laser turrets and solar panels is considered to be too uninteresting/easy" and/or "piercing bullets scale badly with lasers/other personal weapons, due to cost per second of use".

If summarized in this style, I could imagine these to be helpful - they focus on (perceived) problems, not solutions (those can be gleaned from a link to the thread, given interest in them), leaving the details to those who have the vision of their project, and it makes it easier to discuss these aspects (again, given interest in discussion), since discussion can revolve around the "bigger scheme", instead of details (e.g. instead of discussing whether to nerf lasers, panels, or accus, and to which extend, we can focus discussion about how difficult 'infinite green power' should be to obtain, and how difficult it should be to become impervious to any and all attacks).

In both cases, I'd suggest to keep the creation of such summaries in the hand of appointed moderators/volunteers.

(And please, forgive me if I just straight-up repeated everything your OP was about).

Hm. Well, there are those types of suggestions:

the very clear, single suggestions per thread.
I think they don't need to be discussed, it is even questionable, if they need any comment at the end.

Then I think there are those lists of suggestions, where someone puts some ideas in. I think for those it is important to count them. One article only needed.

And then you have those big threads, where everybody has another opinion. For them, I mean they should be handled in your way, cause for me it is clear, that if there is so much discussion, then there must be something "wrong", it has a smell. That's most important for the devs....

What I forgot: instead of the wiki, to handle the suggestions a portal like trello.com seems to be a good idea. The important thing is that it is cooperative work.

Oh, yeah, I somehow failed to consider everything but the megatopics

I like the look of trello.com, at least from a quick glance. Does their idea of "free access" extend to commercial applications (which this could arguably be considered as) as well?

Also...

ssilk wrote:That's most important for the devs....

That point I still somehow missed.
In my suggestion, I was partly considering what I could imagine to be useful, but not what's useful to the makers.
What I imagined here, after reading(misunderstanding?) your OP, was a repository of sorts, in which perceived(!) issues or weak spots with gameplay would be catagolized, similiar to a bug tracker, until someone from the team finds the time to work on it, even if this work only entails discarding the issue after some contemplation ("no benefit"/"too much effort"/"not in line with what we want the game to become").

I have not tried to consider, if this would make their job easier or not. How can we tell without pestering them?

Yes, it makes also our job as suggesters easier, cause when they say, we won't go into this direction, then some others get immediately impossible due to some logic. Best example: there can be only one in-game-story now.

What I think is, that there are of course main topics, but they are not dependend to any current existing list. I think more that the number of suggestions about some stuff is a better indication of a topic. Again I point Khyrons post.

Edit: *SNIP*

Completely misunderstood the direction of the thread. O.O

I prefer to take a look at one of those options:

Paidish solutions
- Recommended: https://www.uservoice.com/
- http://www.crowd.so/
- Expensive: https://getsatisfaction.com/corp/
- http://www.useresponse.com/

Freeish solutions:
- Recommended: https://www.uservoice.com/
- http://www.useresponse.com/
- http://idea.informer.com/
- http://sourceforge.net/projects/openmind/
- https://github.com/ecumen/ideabox
- https://www.eldos.com/vp/
- http://www.osqa.net/
- http://dnnfeedback.codeplex.com/
- http://www.google.com/moderator/

Zourin wrote:Still heavy demand for a lane splitter. No matter how many times the concept gets shot down, people just aren't satisfied with the workaround for the task. I'm surprised it hasn't been handled already. It's natively simple to put items on each side of a belt, but requires some 'creative' (*cough*arcane*cough) mechanics to undo it.

Dunno, what that has to do with the topic ...

Off, topic:
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =14&t=3657
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =14&t=4822

SHiRKiT wrote:I prefer to take a look at one of those options:

Paidish solutions
- Recommended: https://www.uservoice.com/
- http://www.crowd.so/
- Expensive: https://getsatisfaction.com/corp/
- http://www.useresponse.com/

...

Those "solutions" are fine, when you want to know what people are thinking. If you want to sell a product for example. Or for marketing. But game development (or software development in general) has nothing to do with democracy, but more with technical issues.

The question here is: what is the easiest change in the software to gain the most benefit.

In my eyes making this design decision as transparent as possible is much better, than using tools, which feign interest.

And sorry for double posting this. Obviousness reasons.

I use now the word "suggestionsummary" for the step #1 postings.
This looks like so: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/sea ... ionsummary
For me this looks quite useful...

If an suggestionsummary is not accepted I changed it to "Summarynotaccepted". For other cases I will find other words and document it here.

I'll try to make now more random examples and see, if this works.