Is the suggestions forum actually used and read by the developers, or is it just for fun?

Pinkietastic

Terrarian
Hey guys! So, I had a lot of cool ideas that I was wanting to suggest, but I haven’t seen a whole lot of suggested content that’s actually been implemented. I see how it would be fun to toss around ideas with other players, but I don’t really put in all the time and effort to make a really well thought-out suggestion with mock-up sprites and all that if there isn’t actually a real chance that the ideas could end up implemented. I know it’s unlikely for any idea to be added just due to how many there are, but I saw someone say that the suggestions forum was mostly for fun and that there was very little chance anything suggested would ever be implemented - so I think it would be fun to throw around ideas, but I don’t wanna put in all that effort if it’s JUST for fun, ya know?
 
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Hello Pinkietastic,

This by no means represents any official statement from Re-Logic or any official forum policy, its just my own take on the suggestion section to try and answer your question as best I can.

From time to time the Suggestion section is actually read by the developers, and occasionally a suggestion will be picked out to be added into the game. Developers have occasionally commented on suggestions as well. I've seen it happen a few times, but overall it is very rare. As a result in practice, it does act more as a place to post fun ideas and "what if" scenarios for Terraria. Generally a few small items are the types of things that get added into Terraria while larger scale suggestions such as bosses/npcs and biomes tend to not get added into the game. This is mostly with what I've seen in my time on the Terraria Community Forums throughout 7 years.

There's nothing wrong naturally with creating suggestions with the intent of hoping they'll get picked up by the developers. Naturally many members including myself have created suggestions in hopes of seeing their ideas added into the game. Its always possible one of the main developers will see your idea and decide they want to add it into the game. But the times this tends to happen are pretty low. Generally less than 1%. Due to this, it is a better mentality to go in without fully expecting that a suggestion will be added. Its always fine to create ideas and flesh them out well, a great idea that improves an existing area of the game has a higher chance of being added compared to something that is added in randomly.

Hope this clears things up. Suggestions are always encouraged as well as feedback and constructive criticism about suggestions.
 
Hello Pinkietastic,

This by no means represents any official statement from Re-Logic or any official forum policy, its just my own take on the suggestion section to try and answer your question as best I can.

From time to time the Suggestion section is actually read by the developers, and occasionally a suggestion will be picked out to be added into the game. Developers have occasionally commented on suggestions as well. I've seen it happen a few times, but overall it is very rare. As a result in practice, it does act more as a place to post fun ideas and "what if" scenarios for Terraria. Generally a few small items are the types of things that get added into Terraria while larger scale suggestions such as bosses/npcs and biomes tend to not get added into the game. This is mostly with what I've seen in my time on the Terraria Community Forums throughout 7 years.

There's nothing wrong naturally with creating suggestions with the intent of hoping they'll get picked up by the developers. Naturally many members including myself have created suggestions in hopes of seeing their ideas added into the game. Its always possible one of the main developers will see your idea and decide they want to add it into the game. But the times this tends to happen are pretty low. Generally less than 1%. Due to this, it is a better mentality to go in without fully expecting that a suggestion will be added. Its always fine to create ideas and flesh them out well, a great idea that improves an existing area of the game has a higher chance of being added compared to something that is added in randomly.

Hope this clears things up. Suggestions are always encouraged as well as feedback and constructive criticism about suggestions.
Wow, thank you for the awesomely well thought out response (and for making it quickly)! I think I understand it a lot better now - most of the things I’m interested in suggesting are smaller items, QoL game mechanics, etc., and I think it would certainly be fun to suggest them! Thanks for the help, I really appreciate it!
 
With my very short time here in the forums, I've noticed quite a few things and also have a few suggestions for you. :)👉

How suggestions seem to work [1].
  1. If you want to increase the likelihood of your idea being picked up by the Devs, post them on Twitter.
  2. If you have more complex ideas [with room to evolve], and want community support backing you up, post them on Reddit.
  3. Posting ideas on the forums does indeed get picked up by the Devs, but several things tend to happen.
    • You idea will be implemented, but you may not get any response from the Devs.
    • Your idea might be picked up months, or even years later, with or without a response from the Devs
    • A player suggestion poll/ thread may be started by Devs like @Leinfors , where users can make "reasonable" but very limited suggestions.
    • Your idea might be implemented, but in a radically modified manner [which I've witnessed happen on several occasions].
What I'd personally recommend to you [2].
  1. If you have great ideas, use them for you own personal projects/ interests first, and make yourself a priority. Re-Logic is already rich, they don't really need our help to make money or high quality products.
  2. Measuring the quality or value of an idea is tough to do, for example, @Red himself has scoffed at, ignored and chuckled at a decent number of "good" fan suggestions from the past, that looked much different in a post 1.4 world [i.e. Corrupt Jungle, experimental World Seeds]. :)🤷‍♂️
  3. Ideas, especially great ones, are extremely valuable, don't go giving away million dollar ideas for free!
  4. Lastly, don't attach your self-worth to an idea or suggestion that may or may not get picked up by the Dev Team, I've watched many-a-user fall into depression or turn bitter, because they felt "ignored by the Devs". Re-Logic is a great Dev Team, but they are made up of human beings that aren't infallible. I've personally corrected them on several occasions, and have had my own suggestions shot-down that ended up in the game anyway [because they were good]. :)🤷‍♂️
Overall, just have fun if you wanna share your ideas! The game is already good in it's current state 1.4.4.9. If your ideas make it in, great, if they don't, it's not the end of the world!
 
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Since I've been pinged in here . . .

This is not a formal stance or policy, but rather an evaluation of how ReLogic tends to handle suggestions, both from the outside and within.

- In 11.5 years, ReLogic has virtually never implemented full scale bosses, invasions, or biomes to the game via player suggestion.
- ReLogic typically does not add "new concept" original ideas, such as entirely unique weapons, armor, enemies, ores, etc. Anything where it's just a brand new concept that isn't already derived from pre-existing content is usually not added. When new concepts are added, they are usually stuff that ReLogic comes up with on their own.

In the end, and this is just observation here, ReLogic generally does not look for "inspiration for content", but rather, listens to suggestions and ideas for expansions/improvements on pre-existing content. We look for areas that might be worth fleshing out, and something suggestions for ways to do so are added . . . but almost never directly. There's something to be said for the content in the game being "our own creation", and if we just take ideas exactly as proposed by someone else, then it just feels like their content in our game. When we see an idea that has merit or interest, we might take the general idea and modify it until its our vision/interpretation of a similar idea, rather than an identical copy/paste of the suggestion.

Unfortunately, suggestions are almost always the sort of things Relogic doesn't typically take suggestions for (new bosses, biomes, weapons, etc).

There is a further element in play . . .

The Suggestion forums themselves are MASSIVE and filled with a tremendous amount of suggestion content. Its way more content than we could ever hope to add, and simply parsing through it is a major time consuming task. Its just not worth it spending hundreds of hours reviewing ideas when, well, we can make our own ideas that better reflect our vision to begin with. This doesn't mean we aren't open to them, but the suggestion section is an intimidatingly huge block of content to parse through.

Red and Cenx are almost always the ones who decide what content we add, and so they are really the ones who would have to be reading those ideas to decide. And they are also extremely busy.

So the unfortunate reality is that suggestions come in by the literal thousands, and we barely have enough time to implement our own ideas, let alone that of the community. You guys outnumber us over one million to one!
 
We look for areas that might be worth fleshing out, and something suggestions for ways to do so are added . . . but almost never directly. There's something to be said for the content in the game being "our own creation", and if we just take ideas exactly as proposed by someone else, then it just feels like their content in our game.
This is an especially important point to consider, especially back when Master mode first came out.

Many users were upset that Master mode was just extra stats and not even more overhauled AI, because they were used to it in modded Terraria, and some even said they should have just reached out to popular mod developers to officially add their content to the game.

Unfortunately, in the realm of a paid product, you start getting into legal gray areas when just out-right taking stuff from other users, even if you do have permission - to my knowledge, there are no disclaimers anywhere on the forums that all submitted content in the suggestions forum has all rights waived to Re-Logic and becomes their property, so even if they did want to just take a full-on biome suggestion, they'd have to get into legal talks about it to some extent.

Going back to modded Terraria content, if they wanted to out-right import this content, they'd have had to get into talks with the mod developers, basically get them to remove that part of the content from their mod, talk about paid compensation, etc...

It's just a mess all around. As nice as it would be to see stuff like alternatives to the Jungle or Hallow or even Underworld, it'll likely never be something ripped straight from the forums wholesale unless you specifically play modded Terraria.. which we've been given as an official extension, so really, the sky's the limit.

Or Space, I suppose.
 
With my very short time here in the forums, I've noticed quite a few things and also have a few suggestions for you. :)👉

How suggestions seem to work [1].
  1. If you want to increase the likelihood of your idea being picked up by the Devs, post them on Twitter.
  2. If you have more complex ideas [with room to evolve], and want community support backing you up, post them on Reddit.
  3. Posting ideas on the forums does indeed get picked up by the Devs, but several things tend to happen.
    • You idea will be implemented, but you may not get any response from the Devs.
    • Your idea might be picked up months, or even years later, with or without a response from the Devs
    • A player suggestion poll/ thread may be started by Devs like @Leinfors , where users can make "reasonable" but very limited suggestions.
    • Your idea might be implemented, but in a radically modified manner [which I've witnessed happen on several occasions].
What I'd personally recommend to you [2].
  1. If you have great ideas, use them for you own personal projects/ interests first, and make yourself a priority. Re-Logic is already rich, they don't really need our help to make money or high quality products.
  2. Measuring the quality or value of an idea is tough to do, for example, @Red himself has scoffed at, ignored and chuckled at a decent number of "good" fan suggestions from the past, that looked much different in a post 1.4 world [i.e. Corrupt Jungle, experimental World Seeds]. :)🤷‍♂️
  3. Ideas, especially great ones, are extremely valuable, don't go giving away million dollar ideas for free!
  4. Lastly, don't attach your self-worth to an idea or suggestion that may or may not get picked up by the Dev Team, I've watched many-a-user fall into depression or turn bitter, because they felt "ignored by the Devs". Re-Logic is a great Dev Team, but they are made up of human beings that aren't infallible. I've personally corrected them on several occasions, and have had my own suggestions shot-down that ended up in the game anyway [because they were good]. :)🤷‍♂️
Overall, just have fun if you wanna share your ideas! The game is already good in it's current state 1.4.4.9. If your ideas make it in, great, if they don't, it's not the end of the world!
Wow, this is so sweet and wholesome! Thank you, honestly! I always feel bad when I don’t have something long enough to say to match whoever I’m responding to, but I do think you make a lot of very good points here and I really appreciate you taking the time to write all of this out! And I think a lot of that is very true and very smart too, about how if you have ideas relevant to such, you can use them for your own personal projects and stuff! I think that’s something really useful to remember. And it’s especially relevant to me since I like to do a lot of writing and world-building, and if I have an idea that I think is especially great (like, story or lore-wise) I definitely want to keep it to use myself, so I totally agree with the “don’t give away million-dollar ideas for free,” part!!

Since I've been pinged in here . . .

This is not a formal stance or policy, but rather an evaluation of how ReLogic tends to handle suggestions, both from the outside and within.

- In 11.5 years, ReLogic has virtually never implemented full scale bosses, invasions, or biomes to the game via player suggestion.
- ReLogic typically does not add "new concept" original ideas, such as entirely unique weapons, armor, enemies, ores, etc. Anything where it's just a brand new concept that isn't already derived from pre-existing content is usually not added. When new concepts are added, they are usually stuff that ReLogic comes up with on their own.

In the end, and this is just observation here, ReLogic generally does not look for "inspiration for content", but rather, listens to suggestions and ideas for expansions/improvements on pre-existing content. We look for areas that might be worth fleshing out, and something suggestions for ways to do so are added . . . but almost never directly. There's something to be said for the content in the game being "our own creation", and if we just take ideas exactly as proposed by someone else, then it just feels like their content in our game. When we see an idea that has merit or interest, we might take the general idea and modify it until its our vision/interpretation of a similar idea, rather than an identical copy/paste of the suggestion.

Unfortunately, suggestions are almost always the sort of things Relogic doesn't typically take suggestions for (new bosses, biomes, weapons, etc).

There is a further element in play . . .

The Suggestion forums themselves are MASSIVE and filled with a tremendous amount of suggestion content. Its way more content than we could ever hope to add, and simply parsing through it is a major time consuming task. Its just not worth it spending hundreds of hours reviewing ideas when, well, we can make our own ideas that better reflect our vision to begin with. This doesn't mean we aren't open to them, but the suggestion section is an intimidatingly huge block of content to parse through.

Red and Cenx are almost always the ones who decide what content we add, and so they are really the ones who would have to be reading those ideas to decide. And they are also extremely busy.

So the unfortunate reality is that suggestions come in by the literal thousands, and we barely have enough time to implement our own ideas, let alone that of the community. You guys outnumber us over one million to one!
I totally get that about how you wouldn’t want to add content that’s entirely somebody else’s idea, because it would definitely take away from the “home-grown” feel of the game, especially given it seems to be made entirely by a tight-knit group of friends!

I definitely see why ideas that expand on, revise, or improve current content would be much more likely to be picked up. Like for example, I recently made a post detailing some Journey Mode changes that I thought could be useful (like the ability to choose the modifier on a specific weapon or accessory, if it’s a modifier you’ve “unlocked” before), and I see how something small like that that builds on something more related to mechanics and game design would be more within the realm of possibility than something like, say, a new boss or biome would be.

My biggest guess would be that inspiration can come from anywhere, and the suggestions are less of a place to say, “Add this,” and more of a place for people to pool ideas that may have aspects taken from all different ones and used to improve the game in some way. Also I appreciate the fact that you responded to this thread at all, given you’re a main dev and I’m sure you’re also super busy! So thank you!

This is an especially important point to consider, especially back when Master mode first came out.

Many users were upset that Master mode was just extra stats and not even more overhauled AI, because they were used to it in modded Terraria, and some even said they should have just reached out to popular mod developers to officially add their content to the game.

Unfortunately, in the realm of a paid product, you start getting into legal gray areas when just out-right taking stuff from other users, even if you do have permission - to my knowledge, there are no disclaimers anywhere on the forums that all submitted content in the suggestions forum has all rights waived to Re-Logic and becomes their property, so even if they did want to just take a full-on biome suggestion, they'd have to get into legal talks about it to some extent.

Going back to modded Terraria content, if they wanted to out-right import this content, they'd have had to get into talks with the mod developers, basically get them to remove that part of the content from their mod, talk about paid compensation, etc...

It's just a mess all around. As nice as it would be to see stuff like alternatives to the Jungle or Hallow or even Underworld, it'll likely never be something ripped straight from the forums wholesale unless you specifically play modded Terraria.. which we've been given as an official extension, so really, the sky's the limit.

Or Space, I suppose.
Honestly, that’s a really good point about modding! I don’t know how to mod or code or anything like that, but it would be fun to see if I could get with a mod developer who was willing to take ideas! It would also be fun to learn how to make a mod, but JEEEZ that’s a whole lot of work to get into!
 
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@Leinfors I understand that you game developers would rather skip suggestions with "omg I have a great idea for new content can you add it pls pls pls" because I'm aware of how much work it takes to program anything and there are always so many people with great ideas (or people who think they have great ideas but actually don't) coming up and suggesting things, so I restrain myself to only reporting bugs and suggesting improvements to existing features (like this suggestion) and other small things.

Currently I've had great success with reporting bugs and getting things fixed but none of my suggestions have made it to the game. Perhaps I've just arrived too late and you guys don't want to add new stuff right now because you're preparing for 1.4.5 or Terraria 2, but if that's not the case, do you have any advice for people with easier-to-implement ideas that focus on improving existing aspects of the game?
 
@Leinfors I understand that you game developers would rather skip suggestions with "omg I have a great idea for new content can you add it pls pls pls" because I'm aware of how much work it takes to program anything and there are always so many people with great ideas (or people who think they have great ideas but actually don't) coming up and suggesting things, so I restrain myself to only reporting bugs and suggesting improvements to existing features (like this suggestion) and other small things.

Currently I've had great success with reporting bugs and getting things fixed but none of my suggestions have made it to the game. Perhaps I've just arrived too late and you guys don't want to add new stuff right now because you're preparing for 1.4.5 or Terraria 2, but if that's not the case, do you have any advice for people with easier-to-implement ideas that focus on improving existing aspects of the game?

To be honest, the lead up to 1.4.4 was the best time to get changes like that into the game. Red was very receptive to what he called "easy wins" (small changes with a large impact) during the course of the update.

However, we could probably spend FOREVER working on every individual person's bits and pieces of feedback . . . eventually we're going to have to either stop and focus on our own content additions, or move on to another project entirely.

I don't think there is any single best way to ensure any suggestion makes it into the game, there's a lot of luck involved.
 
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