Thought about suggesting changes/feature requests
Pecca
Member Posts: 2,215
I write this in response to some feature requests threads I read lately.
Here is my thought about suggesting changes in general. People usually express their personal opinion on how the game could change for better for themselves and ask community for support/discussion of their idea. Some people would usually agree and some disagree. And what now? Should such a discussion of limited number of people lead to an actual change that would have impact on everyone? On what basis? I think there should be one rule (for lack of a better word), where everyone suggesting a change should first ask themselves a question. "How does my suggestion impact those, who wouldn't agree with me?" This is crucial! If a change can be ignored by those who wouldn't agree to it, then everything is fine (for example, druids can now wear Ankegh plate, if someone think they shouldn't they aren't forced to wear it.). But if a change would force itself on everyone, even those who don't agree with it, then it just feels wrong! Doesn't it? BG series are established and popular games and one would expect enhanced edition to be at the very least as enjoyable as the old version. One would be very disappointed if EE was to feature change to worse (from their personal point of view). So if the latter was the case, than the proposer should resort to mods, instead of trying to force their opinion on everyone.
So that's about all I wanted to say. I'd just like to inspire people to be more thoughtful about this sort of things.
Here is my thought about suggesting changes in general. People usually express their personal opinion on how the game could change for better for themselves and ask community for support/discussion of their idea. Some people would usually agree and some disagree. And what now? Should such a discussion of limited number of people lead to an actual change that would have impact on everyone? On what basis? I think there should be one rule (for lack of a better word), where everyone suggesting a change should first ask themselves a question. "How does my suggestion impact those, who wouldn't agree with me?" This is crucial! If a change can be ignored by those who wouldn't agree to it, then everything is fine (for example, druids can now wear Ankegh plate, if someone think they shouldn't they aren't forced to wear it.). But if a change would force itself on everyone, even those who don't agree with it, then it just feels wrong! Doesn't it? BG series are established and popular games and one would expect enhanced edition to be at the very least as enjoyable as the old version. One would be very disappointed if EE was to feature change to worse (from their personal point of view). So if the latter was the case, than the proposer should resort to mods, instead of trying to force their opinion on everyone.
So that's about all I wanted to say. I'd just like to inspire people to be more thoughtful about this sort of things.
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Edit: It also clutters up the feature requests board. From what remember from when I first came to these forums, the feature requests forum mostly contained insightful ideas that I think had the potential to make meaningful improvements to the game, and I actually felt optimistic about the chances of at least some of them being implemented. Now even when I see an excellent idea posted I can't get too excited, because I have little faith it'll ever see the light of day, as every good request seems to get buried under a pile of inane ones.
Also qualifications and experience of proposers are irrelevant to my point, as my point is only to stress out that changes in favor of proposer's personal preferences (even a well thought idea) might lessen someone else's game experience, and that they should take this into consideration.
Freedom of speech doesn't have anything to do with this topic really.
Ok, so basically every feature request is bad, because implementing those request forces people to play with them being in the game, even if some players doesn't like them. That's a way to nowhere.
Pherhaps putting feature requests as a free and optional DLCs would be a option.
For example the expanded difficulty settings, with various individual options would be great solution, but obviously quite difficult to implement.
I'm not trying to diminish the activity of feature requests. I'm just pointing out that there are things to consider with those suggestions.
I guess we'll see if the devs can change more things to the core content of the game via DLC, time will tell. But anyway, I can understand why a player would float an idea out in the hope that it might catch the eye of a modder. Or possibly the devs, if more can eventually be done via DLCs than they could do with the core product.
And discussing nuances of the game, and our preferences, is what we do all the time--it's fun. Most of the requests will never be taken up, but it's still interesting to think about what modifications might might be made to the game.
And in general, it is in the best interest of everyone to not drown a forum in chaos by repeating the same (good or bad) thing over and over again. It makes it easier for the people who can review requests (and possibly make them happen) to find things. Consider the search options this forum has... (That said, they aren't so insanely bad that we really need a new "How can I get SPOILER NPC?" topic every two days, but that's a different story.)
It does make it tricky to look at a complaint or suggestion and figure out how representative the comment is of players in general. That is a very good reason for not ignoring complaints or suggestions and being sure they are examined in enough detail for advantages, flaws, and the overall community attitude to all be brought out.
And of course, doing that while remaining respectful and civil can be extra challenging too!
And to stick with the above example, I also imply that people who demand leather armor should disable thief skills did not think as far as "how will this fly with other players (for example, players who play computer games, not PnP)". I personally have not much of an opinion about thief skills and leather armor, beyond "I guess it works the way it is now", but I can see how both sides have a point. Which makes this a clear candidate for a mod that many people will like, but not really something that should be forced on everyone.
This has nothing to do with freedom of speech, but rather with the freedom of enjoying the game the way you like it without forcing your choices on others. That's why everything that is not hardcoded should be changed only through mods.
Now that WeiDU has been ported successfully on Mac and procedures have been described to install most mods even on iPad, with and without jailbreaking, there really is no excuse anymore for not using mods, except maybe extreme laziness.
Edit: look here for an example of how requests should be made (i.e. in the Modding section instead of the Feature Requests section; to express my appreciation to the OP I even made myself a mod for him).