[Suggestion] Sub forum for suggestions viewable only by poster and ANet

One think I would like to see on the forums is a sub forum for suggestions that are only viewable by the poster and ANet. It could be used to suggest items and events that would be better left as a surprise to other players. An ANet email address would also do for receiving suggestions like that. ANet might find more interesting suggestions that they could pull from for the game.

Errm is that what private messages are for.

If its just a two way discussion why do you need a sub forum.. or do we all get to have individual sub-forums ??

I think an email address or an Anet account to PM would be better. Even if they restricted it to people who have posted on the forum the list of hidden sub-forums would be huge (remember Anet would have to see all of them) and most of them would never get used, or would be used once or twice at most. The logical answer to that is you have to contact someone to have them set up a subforum for you, but why go through all that hassle when you could just put your suggestion in the initial message?

The problem with an email address however is copyright. I'm not sure how many people know this but in order to use this forum we all accepted a user agreement which (amongst other things) says that any suggestions we post here are the property of Anet and they can use them as they want without having to pay, or even acknowledge, us. There's no way to do that with an email address - at best you can have an automatic reply so that after you've sent your suggestion you get the disclaimer, but then it can't apply to your original email. In theory someone could send a suggestion then if/when anything like that appears in the game claim credit and sue for recognition or even payment for it. It might never happen, but it's probably not worth the risk.

So probably an account we can PM would be best. Probably one set up for that purpose so there's not one poor person being swamped with PMs every time they log in. Of course it would still be a lot of work to sort through them - to respond to the ones that don't need to be kept secret and should be posted as a topic so other players can contribute, and to pass on any which are worthwhile.

I dunno it seems kinda... shady?

I was suggesting one sub-forum for everyone but they could only see their own post. Although an email address would be better and more simple to setup. My reasoning behind private suggestions is to avoid spoilers if ANet chooses to use it in some form.

@Danikat.8537 said:The problem with an email address however is copyright. I'm not sure how many people know this but in order to use this forum we all accepted a user agreement which (amongst other things) says that any suggestions we post here are the property of Anet and they can use them as they want without having to pay, or even acknowledge, us. There's no way to do that with an email address - at best you can have an automatic reply so that after you've sent your suggestion you get the disclaimer, but then it can't apply to your original email. In theory someone could send a suggestion then if/when anything like that appears in the game claim credit and sue for recognition or even payment for it. It might never happen, but it's probably not worth the risk.

If I suggest something on here I give it freely because I enjoy the game. I'm not going to suggest something that I want to keep ownership of.

I like your suggestion, but unfortunately others would use it to overwhelm ANet with demands for nerfs, nerfs, and more nerfs. And I don't want those suggestions hidden. I want to see them because Internet anonymity makes board warriors brave, but your suggestion would make them heroic.

Let's not have any of that.

@Ardenwolfe.8590 said:I like your suggestion, but unfortunately others would use it to overwhelm ANet with demands for nerfs, nerfs, and more nerfs. And I don't want those suggestions hidden. I want to see them because Internet anonymity makes board warriors brave, but your suggestion would make them heroic.

Let's not have any of that.

I never said anonymous. ANet would be able to see who it came from.

I think this would simply cause an increase in the amount of duplicate suggestions being made and an increased workload for ArenaNet to review them. Especially important given how few suggestions are actually acted upon.

Also the debate around suggestions give a much better idea of general feelings over the area the suggestion covers.

@Tekoneiric.6817 said:

I never said anonymous. ANet would be able to see who it came from.

It's anonymous to the community if it's only between the poster and Anet, isn't it?

@Tekoneiric.6817 said:One think I would like to see on the forums is a sub forum for suggestions that are only viewable by the poster and ANet.

This means anonymous if it cannot be viewed by the public at large.

1. with no name known or acknowledged
2. given, written, etc. by a person whose name is withheld or unknown
3. not easily distinguished from others or from one another because of a lack of individual features or character

Source: http://www.yourdictionary.com/anonymous

Hope that clears up any further confusion.

Build templates would be a surprise for sure, even though they aren't "secret suggestion".

I personally rather see the horrid ideas that some of the people on here come up with and try to get my newspaper to hit them and go "No! Bad! Bad! No!" before Arenanet somehow listens to them.

@"Ayumi Spender.1082" said:I personally rather see the horrid ideas that some of the people on here come up with and try to get my newspaper to hit them and go "No! Bad! Bad! No!" before Arenanet somehow listens to them.

LOL - Exactly.

@Tekoneiric.6817 said:

@Danikat.8537 said:The problem with an email address however is copyright. I'm not sure how many people know this but in order to use this forum we all accepted a user agreement which (amongst other things) says that any suggestions we post here are the property of Anet and they can use them as they want without having to pay, or even acknowledge, us. There's no way to do that with an email address - at best you can have an automatic reply so that after you've sent your suggestion you get the disclaimer, but then it can't apply to your original email. In theory someone could send a suggestion then if/when anything like that appears in the game claim credit and sue for recognition or even payment for it. It might never happen, but it's probably not worth the risk.

Sure, you would give them freely. So would I and I suspect the vast majority of people on this forum. But it only takes 1 person to cause trouble. Especially if they suggested something big. Imagine if this system had existed before and someone had suggested a storyline where instead of dragons we're fighting an evil god who wants to take all this excess magic for themselves and doesn't care that it will destroy Tyria. It's not such an unusual idea within fantasy that it's impossible for someone else to think of it, and then when PoF came out they could take Anet to court and they'd have to either prove that they had the idea first or hand over a chunk of the profits from PoF and possibly future profits too.

Now imagine a 2nd person had suggested adding mounts who each have their own unique abilities and had given examples like jumping over obstacles, carrying us over water and teleporting. Again it's unique enough that they could claim it's an original idea (unlike simply suggesting mounts) and similar enough to PoF that they could claim Anet had obviously used their idea. So they take Anet to court and again they have to prove they had the idea first or pay up. Or they could simply have sent in designs for mount skins and claimed the profits from that.

Obviously that's an over-simplification of the process, but it's the basic idea - come up with an idea original enough that you can claim you didn't copy it from elsewhere and show you suggested it to the people who made a profit from it, then claim some of that profit for yourself.

@"Ardenwolfe.8590" said:I like your suggestion, but unfortunately others would use it to overwhelm ANet with demands for nerfs, nerfs, and more nerfs. And I don't want those suggestions hidden. I want to see them because Internet anonymity makes board warriors brave, but your suggestion would make them heroic.

Let's not have any of that.

Don't forget there's nothing to say Anet will use all (or any) of these suggestions. I'm one of the people who thinks they do use player suggestions, but they couldn't use all of them even if they wanted to - some contradict others and some are too vague to be implemented (my favourites there are "overhaul crafting" and "fix the system"). They're also going to use their own judgement on what's a good idea and what isn't. They're not going to nerf everything just because someone tells them to.

If you provide any Feedback and/or User Submissions, you warrant that you are eighteen years of age or older. If you are under eighteen years of age, you are not permitted to provide ArenaNet with Feedback and/or User Submissions.

I just noticed this little gem in the Terms of Use - I wonder how many "questionable" threads we'd get rid of if this would be enforced :tongue:

Anyway, btt.I think posting suggestions on the Forum is fine since the forum only represents a minority of players and maybe another player might even improve a suggestion. And if ANet decides to use or partially use a suggestion that was postet on the Forum they wouldn't make a post there and tell everyone, so we never know which of the thousands of suggestions in the forum are gonna be used and which won't. And in extreme cases they could remove the post of any suggestion they like to make sure the post doesn't go around too much, but that sounds weird :)

And I have a small question as a side note, I'll put it in spoilers since it doesn't really belong here.

! I have read the Terms of Use for the game and Forum and so on but it's still unclear to me weather or not a post made explicitly in quotes is affected by the Terms of Use, or rather the "Your User Submissions, Feedback, and Conduct" - Chapter. If I'd post a concept or suggestion entirely in quotes, remarking that it is my personal work quoted from a source other than the GW2 Forum - Would that post of mine still grant "a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, broadcast, license, post, sell, translate, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions for any purpose whatsoever, commercial or otherwise, in any medium now known or hereafter devised, without compensation or credit to the provider of the User Submissions."? (Copied from the Terms of Use)

How does suggesting something break the surprise? ANet doesn't announce ahead of time if its going to use a suggestion and we only know when it rolls out live, except for the parts they use as hype. No matter how much attention any suggestion receives, until it arrrives it’s hidden from us and a surprise when it arrives.

Edit: in addition, any suggestion is going to be reworked a lot before it’s used. It won’t be the suggestion as it was on the forum. So at best any suggestion will only provide the original starting point for what they make.

@Ardenwolfe.8590 said:

@Tekoneiric.6817 said:

I never said anonymous. ANet would be able to see who it came from.

@Tekoneiric.6817 said:One think I would like to see on the forums is a sub forum for suggestions that are only viewable by the poster and ANet.

1. with no name known or acknowledged
2. given, written, etc. by a person whose name is
   withheld
   or unknown
3. not easily distinguished from others or from one another because of a lack of individual features or character

The word your looking for is invisible. No one but the poster and ANet would know about it; to everyone else it would be invisible. They wouldn't see the post at all.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/invisible ;)

Anonymous implies that they know the post exists and could possible read it but couldn't see who posted it. If the post showed up but was unreadable it wouldn't matter to anyone if they saw who the author of the post was.

And this is where I leave the thread. Regardless, it's a bad idea if the community is not allowed to make their opinions known with such suggestions. No matter what you want to call it. I'm not here to argue semantics.

@"Danikat.8537" said:

Don't forget there's nothing to say Anet will use all (or any) of these suggestions. I'm one of the people who thinks they do use player suggestions, but they couldn't use all of them even if they wanted to - some contradict others and some are too vague to be implemented (my favourites there are "overhaul crafting" and "fix the system"). They're also going to use their own judgement on what's a good idea and what isn't. They're not going to nerf everything just because someone tells them to.

This is valid. Unfortunately, playing a ranger, I've seen some shady nerfs (made by suggestion) that were later reversed. The smokescale one (assault to F2) specifically. If the suggestion was made anonymously, and yes that is the correct word, then the community would have no idea where or why the smokescale nerf would've come from much less the reasoning behind it.

Regardless, again, this suggestion is a bad one. And it's one I sincerely hope ANet disregards for obvious reasons.

Peace.

@"TwilightSoul.9048" said:

If you provide any Feedback and/or User Submissions, you warrant that you are eighteen years of age or older. If you are under eighteen years of age, you are not permitted to provide ArenaNet with Feedback and/or User Submissions.

Not much probably. I am pretty sure most of GW2 audience is 25-40.

@"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:How does suggesting something break the surprise? ANet doesn't announce ahead of time if its going to use a suggestion and we only know when it rolls out live, except for the parts they use as hype. No matter how much attention any suggestion receives, until it arrrives it’s hidden from us and a surprise when it arrives.

A public post even behind a "spoiler" warning makes the suggestion less likely to be used. If someone for example posted a suggestion about an interesting location to hide a chest w/achievement then players viewing the suggestion would go to see the location and ANet would know that it's been broadcast to other players thus they wouldn't put a chest in that location voiding the public suggestion.

Let me give a specific example. One Frostgorge Sound next to the BLTP NPCs there is a repair merchant with a closed tent behind him. Before all the void jumping fixes a player could stand on top of the tent then go to the character select screen and back to the character. They would then be inside the tent. A chest could have been hidden there with an achievement attached. If that suggestion had been posted public on the forum when it still worked people would see the post and go try it out. Different people would be trying it as they browsed the public posts and came across it. It would never get used because of that.

@Tekoneiric.6817 said:

@"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:How does suggesting something break the surprise? ANet doesn't announce ahead of time if its going to use a suggestion and we only know when it rolls out live, except for the parts they use as hype. No matter how much attention any suggestion receives, until it arrrives it’s hidden from us and a surprise when it arrives.

Even if ANet were to use a suggestion it wouldn’t be immediately. There would be a lapse of time before it’s implemented.

So lets say a chest location is suggested. ANet reads it and decides to do it. Of course they don’t say that they have accepted the idea. Do you think that the handful of people who read some post a month or a few months back are checking that site to see if it’s put in game? Of course not. It would be suggested then forgotten like the vast majority of the suggestions that flood the forums. And when it’s put in, a month or some months later, unless it’s announced then no one knows it’s there and it’s a surprise when it’s found.

I seem to recall once a long, long time ago, in a completely different MMO forum, a question like this was asked and the response had to do with some legal issues with the difference between using an idea retrieved from a public context vs a private one. I sadly don't remember the exact context of the question, or if it's even a thing any more, but maybe that has something to do with it? :thinking:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

Even if ANet were to use a suggestion it wouldn’t be immediately. There would be a lapse of time before it’s implemented.

So lets say a chest location is suggested. ANet reads it and decides to do it. Of course they don’t say that they have accepted the idea. Do you think that the handful of people who read some post a month or a few months back are checking that site to see if it’s put in game? Of course not. It would be suggested then forgotten like the vast majority of the suggestions that flood the forums. And when it’s put in, a month or some months later, unless it’s announced then no one knows it’s there and it’s a surprise when it’s found.

I do understand that it takes months or longer to add features but it's not uncommon for old dead posts to suddenly rise to the top because someone responded to it. People do read old months old posts.

@Tekoneiric.6817 said:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

Even if ANet were to use a suggestion it wouldn’t be immediately. There would be a lapse of time before it’s implemented.

So lets say a chest location is suggested. ANet reads it and decides to do it. Of course they don’t say that they have accepted the idea. Do you think that the handful of people who read some post a month or a few months back are checking that site to see if it’s put in game? Of course not. It would be suggested then forgotten like the vast majority of the suggestions that flood the forums. And when it’s put in, a month or some months later, unless it’s announced then no one knows it’s there and it’s a surprise when it’s found.

Yep. But what are the odds that some random dead thread from months ago rises to the top and it also happens to be the one from which ANet was just about to add that particular suggestion, and it causes people who don’t know that the suggestion was accepted to run out to that spot and check it out for no real reason.

Not very likely.

Unlikely to have new sub-forums added, as with this new forum, the policy instated was 'less sub-forums'. Not to mention that the Devs stated the reason the old 'Suggestion' sub-forum was removed was that it was difficult for the Devs to read/keep up with.
I would imagine a thread with many posts is more likely to draw the attention of the Devs than single post threads. If they wanted something like the OP's request, they probably would not have the 'Do Not PM Devs' policy. /shrug