You have hiding your suggestions in the discussion forum down to a fine art and you are not the only one. Lets just have one forum so it's not only people who are expert social engineers that get to be heard?
You seem to think that by attacking me posting in the main forums you will somehow fix the Devs not paying attention to suggestion forums. I'm not opposed to the idea of a single forum, but I do find it irritating when people say the Devs aren't listening and take it out on me when I say they are and thus the suggestion forums are useful.
Your position and arguments are weak,
@Grand Historian .
And what exactly are we arguing about here? The merging of the forum - which has been settled by Trin already, by the way - or the fact that I like posting long threads?
You'd better admit that some of your threads actually look like suggestions and you place them where you expect them to gain much support.
I have.
Yes, this is along this lines of 'Great Suggestion!' - especially considering this thread is the only one that actually borders on being an outright suggestion.
A 'petition' is nothing else but a suggestion deriving its legitimacy from widespread support.
Yes and no - Petitions are requests, and as are suggestions, but requests do not have to be suggestions. If I were to make a petition asking for an East Asia expansion, and all I put was 'East Asia plz' and got 300 agrees, it would still be a 'Suggestion' in a very loose sense, but it would not be worthy of putting in the Suggestion Subforum as it is a request and not an outright Suggestion. If I were to lay out an argument for why there should be an East Asia expansion and what it could possibly entail, or say what it should focus on (an East Asia expansion should focus on East Asia, not x) then would it be a Suggestion? Perhaps, but should it be put in the Suggestion forums? Unless if I'm laying out detailed step by step guidelines on how a specific mechanic could work, complete with concrete numbers instead of just a general overview, I don't think so. It remains a request to let the devs know that x amount of people in the forum want or don't want something.
Furthermore, it's also worth noting that the Suggestion Forums were created with the intent for submitting suggestions
for new content. Threads on balance - and this includes ideas and other thoughts on them - are perfectly acceptable in the main forums. And that compromises a good deal of the threads I write there.
Me, I don't mind. Whatever works. But we should not treat developers in too humble fashion.
Yes, demanding stuff from the Devs is always a good way to get their cooperation.
Most recently
@Shadowstrike hurried to assure us (them?) that they are busy and have just limited time etc. Years ago, I've been running my own business, and not the smallest one (300 employees). I did not hesitate to communicate personally with my customers on any occassion, day and night. That's the basic rule of doing a business, your customer must never gain an impression that he/she is not important to you. Otherwise he/she leaves to more sensitive competitor.
While I can respect your business experience, this makes you qualified to speak on Paradox's behalf, how? Paradox is a relatively small company and the EU4 team has seen quite a few shifts recently, and while I'm not certain what your business is/was, I'm fairly certain that it probably was larger than the EU4 Dev team from your numbers.
Heck, Paradox is a lot more active on their forums than most of their competitors, and admit their mistakes a lot more as well. That said, would it be nice to have them active more? Absolutely, but Paradox is probably the most 'sensitive' studio out there aside from Indies.
So, we should definitely NOT invent apologies for PI whenever we feel that they do not communicate with us as much as we'd like to.
Mileage may vary.
We should cry loudly and they should take it seriously. It's their fault in doing business, and we have all rights to request attention because we pay their wages. If you asked me, I'd tell you that I'm gradually moving from 'disappointed' to 'discontented', and this move may easily continue to more expressive stances.
The devs are not obligated to respond, but they still listen. The Iberian Union was seriously buffed with 1.17 - would it have happened if it weren't for the three or four threads that popped up on it? I can't say, but it's highly likely they were the cause. Regardless, the devs did not respond to any of them and yet they still did what the posters and subsequently forum wanted.
And, ultimately, like every company, the Devs have to weigh customers. If one customer is unhappy with x, should we change it and risk potentially upsetting ten more customers for the sake of one? They paid too. And that's the beauty of petitions and other discussions; it gives the devs a proportional idea of how the fanbase would react to a change ahead of time, and whether or not they should go through with it.
Having a bajillion replies on the main forum means nothing if a dev doesn't show up.
Which I have found is the case 9/10 in the 'Suggestion' threads I've posted that Edmon is raging against - while I have seen the Devs reply or acknowledge threads much more often here.
