Well currently it is hidden in a link in the help section. You click and it will redirect you to a wiki page. Then it takes you some time to find the link to go to uservoice.

Could you say it is a good design?

Every extra click counts! There is an experiment about web design, and it tells you how small change makes big difference. It is about the reply box.

The first one is you need to click, and it will redirect you to another page which shows the reply box. Then you can input your comments and press submit.

The second one is the reply box is shown directly in the same page. You can input your comments and press submit.

Result: The second one receives so much more replies than the first one.

As a designer it is your job to make it more accessible, not to blame users when they couldn't find it.

If the developer feels the need to sticky this thread so more people can discover/use uservoice, it would be more rewarding if he could redesign the pages.

Edited 9/30/2015 07:00:31

There are some limitations on uservoice.

You have 10 votes only.
You can't make a new suggestion/idea if you have used 10 votes.
It does not favor small changes/features. People are not going to vote for them, not because they don't want them, but the benefits are small. The developer will probably misjudge the community needs for small changes/features.
Very few check for new ideas periodically on uservoice. Your idea will be left unnoticed if you don't post it on the forum too.
So you still need to open a thread to advertise your idea anyway. :P

For those who are out of votes, forum is a good place to make suggestions.

You can't make a new suggestion/idea if you have used 10 votes.

Incorrect. You can always take your votes away from ideas, so you can get your votes back at any time and keep making new suggestions.

You have 10 votes only.

This is by design. I can only work on one thing at a time, anyway, so if you're voting on more than 4 things it isn't really accomplishing anything -- all you're doing is spreading your voice thinner. Instead, you should put 3 votes into the three things you really want.

Last time I checked there were a lot more people that play on Warlight. That is a lot of people who don't get their voice heard.

Fair enough. But even if everyone's voice was heard, it wouldn't help me complete features any faster. The goal of UserVoice is to help me understand what people want. Even if only a small random sample of WarLight's audience uses it, it accomplishes that goal. Of course, you could argue the sample isn't random and only the most passionate users vote, which skews the numbers.

It does not favor small changes/features. People are not going to vote for them, not because they don't want them, but the benefits are small. The developer will probably misjudge the community needs for small changes/features.

You're making the assumption that more votes means it's more likely to happen. That's not true -- I judge the number of votes relative to the amount of work it would take to implement, and also factor in my own opinion of the item and how it fits into WarLight's overall direction. If you go to the UserVoice forum, look at completed items, you'll see there are items that got done with very low votes.

So you still need to open a thread to advertise your idea anyway. :P

Honestly all this does is skew the numbers. I try and use UserVoice as a way to see what the community wants, but if some ideas are advertised on the forum and others aren't it makes my job harder since it means that UserVoice votes are no longer a fair assessment of what people really want, since those ideas got more exposure than others. I factor this in, too, when examining the numbers.

Status: Ignored for about 3-4 years.

It takes minutes to hours to come up with an idea, and months to years to implement many of them. Not to mention there are thousands of people coming up with ideas and one person implementing them. By definition, most items won't be able to be completed quickly. But if they're still good ideas that I'd like to do some day, what would you suggest doing with them? Closing them isn't really fair since they're good ideas, and I'd still like to know how many people want them and if I close it then it can't be voted on.

Edited 9/30/2015 06:59:37

900 votes is a lot. How long would it take to program something so that when FFAs are played, there are settings that allow for diplomatic actions? For example:

(1) Alliances

- Players work together and are literally (the system won't allow it) unable to attack each other for the specified number of turns.
- The number of turns could be negotiated in private or public chat.
- If you want to make this really cool, the allies establish an "Ally Chat" (like team chat) for as long as the alliance lasts.
- If players want to end the alliance, they have to notify the ally x turns in advance (make this customizable in the game creation settings).

(2) Truces

- This simply means you cannot attack someone else (the system won't allow it). There is no alliance per se.
- Negotiate the duration in public/private chat. It cannot end early. Or, if someone attacks during a truce, the player is punished (eg, maybe half income the next turn).

(3) Coalitions/Public Enemy

- Players negotiate and agree to attack one enemy together for a specified duration.
- Joining a coalition means you cannot attack any other person (the system won't allow it) until the coalition disbands.

(4) Card or Income Sharing

- In the real world, allies share resources, fight in the same armies, etc. Make this happen in WL and it would be cool. WL resources: cards. WL armies: income.

Diplomacy cards don't do any of this. A diplomacy card is a unilateral action. The above settings would be bilateral or multilateral -- that is, real diplomacy.

-------

If a diplomacy framework (above, an example) were designed, couldn't you make some money by having it exclusively pay-to-play -- ie, "no luck" coin -- or require players to pay a one-time fee to create and join games of this nature -- diplo memberships of one month, one year, one WarLife (we will live longer than WL...)?

Edited 9/30/2015 08:10:15

So it takes a lot of time to create a poll for voting on the 1vs1 ladder changes? You're saying you see votes in relation of the amount of time you'd need to make it. I think changing 1vs1 ladder settings wasn't that much of work.

EDIT: just realized you edited that part to "and also factor in my own opinion of the item and how it fits into WarLight's overall direction." So we won't get back our old 1vs1 ladder ever? Will you not even give us the chance to prove you by poll what the community wants?

Destroying the template i associated with warlight isn't the way to make coin games more attractive.

At least you semi admitted that the ladder change wasn't requested by the community. You was never interacting with the community in your thread asking about our opinion about ladders becoming no luck. You just tried to prepare us on that change. Claiming you care about our opinion was pure hypocrisy.

Edited 9/30/2015 09:06:11

This thread went a bit offroad, but I would like to give my own opinion about the subject.
I would like to reefer to what you said in last stream regardless "Overhall of Clan System" idea on uservoice. You said, that only 2-3% of all players belongs to any clan and you'd rather change something, that will make 100% players benefit from, than only 2-3%.

Have you ever heard about 80/20 rule? It was originally about time management (80% of work require 20% of time, and last 20% of work takes 80% of time). In this case, 20% of players have impact on 80% of Warligth, while 80% have impact only on 80% of what happens in this game. For example 1v1 ladder started from 75% luck. Community reduced it to 16% and then 0% WR. Clan league is still one of the most prominent league. Livestream tournaments, or other events like this are rum ONLY by players who belongs to clan. Check fourm - I dare you to find any thread in any topic with over 20 replays, where 50% or more players are clanless. List can go on and on.

So my question is: is it fair, to adjust whole site to this 80% of mass, that doesn't care so much about WL and just play casual game once a week? Shouldn't you been more concerned about players, who actually stick to this game, helped improve it and mold it into the way it looks like now?

Edited 9/30/2015 10:41:28

Latnox: i want to see a clan member host the livestream this Saturday then ;)

Also about 1v1 ladder, 2v2 ladder - you want to adjust this settings to 80% of players so badly, but do they really benefit from those changes? I mean if someone doesn't see difference between WR and SR, maybe 1v1 ladder is not for him?

2v2 ladder - 2 or 4 picks makes difference only for experienced players. Newbies doesn't even know how much they should pick to not get random spot on a start! If they don't understand the settings, and can't make good strategy with 4 picks per player, again, maybe 2v2 ladder is not for them? Noone force them to play it if they don't like it. I'd rather play ladder, that have 100 competitive players, than 300 players, with 200, who doesn't know how to play.

And I'm not saying, this because I'm a big fan on Strat ME. No, I'm fine with 0% SR, because good player should be able to win despite the settings (as long as they are fair). But I completely disagree with reasoning behind this and I don't like how community is being neglected.

Edited 9/30/2015 10:31:32

PS - ok, you're exception that confirms the rule :)

the 80/20 is the famous Pareto rule :) i hope everyone know him, one of best microeconomics of history.
Yeah i agree 100% with what latnox said.

for example, check 1v1 and the new 3v3 ladder, around 80% of players are in a clan.

I'm making a new uservoice about the diplo settings that won't be as complicated for Fizzer to implement and will appease the rp/diplo players for the time being.

@Fizzer, is there any reason not to have a link to uservoice on the Community page? It is very hidden. I don't even know how to navigate to it without typing in the URL. That is a problem.

Want to find uservoice? Make a uservoice.

ps doesn't want suggestions without a proper uservoice link.

So you still need to open a thread to advertise your idea anyway. :P

Honestly all this does is skew the numbers. I try and use UserVoice as a way to see what the community wants, but if some ideas are advertised on the forum and others aren't it makes my job harder since it means that UserVoice votes are no longer a fair assessment of what people really want, since those ideas got more exposure than others. I factor this in, too, when examining the numbers.

@Fizzer,
so you'd rather spend more time in checking if someone's advertising their thread than advertising the uservoice yourself?i don't see how that's helping you
edit:-although i have to agree that the dashboard is a bit crowded and it won't be great to have everyone spamming on forums and uservoice altogether,but since uservoice has more restriction than the forums,and better filters,i would like to see it somewhere which is more visible to everyone
i also want to apologise about spamming EU4x4(which was 4x5 for very small time)

Edited 9/30/2015 14:53:20

I may be wrong about this, but I think the Off-Topic Forum doesn't appear on the Dashboard. If this is the case, it shouldn't be too hard to create a "Uservoice" forum that wouldn't appear on the Dashboard. Then, you could put 5 uservoices (ordered however) on the Dashboard without fear of double posts cluttering up the dashboard.

I don't really like the argument of who it will impact either (that clans are %5 or whatever number) of all players. What percentage of players on the forums are clan people (I would guess %75+)? What percentage of people on ladders are clan people (%50?). So to say that clans are %5 of all users seems silly to me when I would bet a large percentage of those non clan players are inactive anyway, and don't really contribute to the community at all. I would rather know in all games being played, what % of players are in a clan or not.

Also, there are 158 clans on warlight, all purchased by someone. That isn't a huge amount of money going to Fizzer ($2,370), but what have they gotten for that investment?

-Clan forums (most won't use since they have no mod/admin abilities there)
-Clan page (nice, but does not have many abilities either)
-Clan listing page (not a ranking anyone likes, only promotes spamming)
-Clan Icon (great thing to have as tags were crappy with name changing)

It would be really nice if those contributing people got a little more out of the clan system. Like a real ranking system. Knyte did a lot of work on pulling stats, but everything we've heard from Fizzer implies it will never be implemented, even if users did %100 of the work on the ranking methods.


I realize every feature has amount of work, who it impacts, vision of site, etc to balance. But some things that are done on there seem to be pretty useless IMO (or at least target a much smaller group of people than clan players). Like putting music in game (15 votes), Facebook integration (8 votes), Global Chat room (9 votes), Volume slider (15 votes)

Edited 9/30/2015 18:33:56

It does not favor small changes/features. People are not going to vote for them, not because they don't want them, but the benefits are small. The developer will probably misjudge the community needs for small changes/features.


You're making the assumption that more votes means it's more likely to happen. That's not true -- I judge the number of votes relative to the amount of work it would take to implement, and also factor in my own opinion of the item and how it fits into WarLight's overall direction. If you go to the UserVoice forum, look at completed items, you'll see there are items that got done with very low votes.

Thanks for your clarification. It is good to know the number of votes is not the deciding factor.

So you still need to open a thread to advertise your idea anyway. :P


Honestly all this does is skew the numbers. I try and use UserVoice as a way to see what the community wants, but if some ideas are advertised on the forum and others aren't it makes my job harder since it means that UserVoice votes are no longer a fair assessment of what people really want, since those ideas got more exposure than others. I factor this in, too, when examining the numbers.

Well I think you could put it in a positive way. If someone cares so much about that idea and spends time to promote it, it means they really want it. You may view their action and enthusiasm as one extra vote to the idea. ;-)

Getting more exposure is not a bad thing. The number isn't skewed. You can't force people to vote. People don't vote if they don't agree or want it. I would say they are just helping it to reflect its "true value". ^_^

For others who do not get enough exposure, they are most likely "undervalued". You may use your personal judgement to add some values arbitrarily to those ideas. ;-)

Status: Ignored for about 3-4 years.


It takes minutes to hours to come up with an idea, and months to years to implement many of them. Not to mention there are thousands of people coming up with ideas and one person implementing them. By definition, most items won't be able to be completed quickly. But if they're still good ideas that I'd like to do some day, what would you suggest doing with them? Closing them isn't really fair since they're good ideas, and I'd still like to know how many people want them and if I close it then it can't be voted on.

I don't think he deliberately delays implementing them, but he has a life, and there are many good ideas around. Programming is not something as simple as it looks. Users usually way underestimate the time required to code some feature.

Edited 9/30/2015 18:56:23

So true, just coding the pre-alpha version of the game probably took quite a long amount of time, despite how basic the game looks. Coding a game of even this level is not an easy task, otherwise everyone would be doing it all the time.

+1 japan77

As someone who only recently began to learn to code, I can say this seems verrrrrry accurate.
Hence why I proposed my idea for increased uservoice visibility. At the very least, I feel like a separate forum for uservoice posts is a good idea (shouldn't be too hard to implement) and if the hard part (linking uservoice to the dashboard) turns out to be an easier job than I think it is, then it shouldn't be too hard to hide the uservoice forum from the dashboard (because the code already exists, you just have to apply it from the off-topic forum to the new Uservoice forum) which would alleviate concerns of dashboard overcrowding.

Edited 10/1/2015 11:36:44

Also, a lot of times code you wrote years ago needs to be refactored to allow for an update you want to do now.

I have tried hard not to judge how much time something might take because even though I program, I have no idea the complexity of the code that already exists here.

My only issue is the notion that clans are a small % of WL players so it doesn't make sense to do something for that small %.

1) people paid for the clans (2800 bucks total)

2) I would bet a % of games played by clans is FAR higher than the amount of clan players. That is what matters when considering the level of impact something might have.