Important Game Suggestions: Rules & Guidelines

[Loki]

Welcome to the ever popular Game Suggestions section of the forum! The following documentation provides an overview of what actions are acceptable and unacceptable within the section.

Spoiler: Table of Contents

• Table of Contents
• Game Suggestions Summary
• Game Suggestions Rules
• Criticism Guidelines
• Change Notes

Game Suggestions Summary

Practically every person that has ever played a game has had ideas of how that game could be improved and that is the reason for this section: providing an area for members to suggest ways they think Terraria could be improved. This section has title prefixes that are broken down into eight categories, six devoted to a specific type of suggestion and two for suggestions that don't fit in one of the other six categories. Please ensure you pick the correct prefix when creating a thread.

• NPCs & Enemies: This prefix is for suggestions related to Non-Player Characters, such as town and non-town NPCs, bosses, enemy mobs, and critters.
• Weapons & Equip: This prefix is for suggestions related to various types of equipable items, such as weapons, tools, armor, accessories, and vanities.
• Items: This prefix is for suggestions related to items that aren't equipment, blocks, or decorations, such as crafting materials, mob drops, and other miscellaneous items.
• Biomes & Nature: This prefix is for suggestions related to the natural world of Terraria, such as biomes and non-interactive graphical decorations.
• Blocks & Decorations: This prefix is for suggestions related to blocks, walls, crafting stations, furniture, decorative items, and generally all placeable game items.
• Game Mechanics: This prefix is for suggestions related to the features and mechanics of the game engine, such as NPC AIs, game physics, the user interface, and the wiring system.
• Portfolios/Multi-Topic: This prefix is slightly different from the others. In addition to being for complex suggestions that span multiple suggestion types, this prefix allows members to create a thread devoted to organizing and listing all of their suggestions and related information. One can think of such a thread as their very own suggestion devoted mega-thread.
• Other: This prefix is a catchall for suggestions that simply do not fit into one of the other available areas.

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Game Suggestions Rules

• Terrarian Community Rules & Culture apply to all categories, groups, sections, and threads on the forum.

• Do not plagiarize other member's suggestions. Doing so will not be tolerated.
• Do not use all UPPER CASE, leet or meme speak, or ambiguous wording when choosing a thread title. Thread titles should be clear, concise, and give a good idea of what will be suggested in the thread.
• Do not create joke or troll suggestions. Those kinds of topics are not welcome and will be locked.
• Do not make disrespectful comments. Constructive criticism and helpful suggestions for improvement are welcome. Insulting, rude, and mean-spirited comments are not.
• Do not engage with disrespectful or hostile comments. Simply report the post and then pretend it never existed. Staff will handle the situation from there. Do be aware that criticism is not the same as an attack. Please attempt to take constructive advice for what it is, an attempt to help improve the suggestion.
• Do not post duplicate suggestions. The forum has a working search feature and the community staff request that it be utilized. There is nothing wrong with similar suggestions that have their own unique take on a base idea, but simple and/or highly focused suggestions such as a popular type of new boss or a nerf to a well known weapon are unlikely to have multiple, unique avenues to support more than a single suggestion thread and these sort of redundant suggestions will be locked.

• Please avoid posting simple agreement/disagreement comments, such as "I like this!", "Good suggestion", or "This is bad". Instead, use the like button to show agreement and always give constructive feedback when posting disapproval, for example, including a useful sentence or two on why the suggestion is disagreeable.
• In addition to the built-in title prefix tags, thread creators can provide one or more text tags to help identify the content of the thread and these should be included in the text of the thread title. For example, if one was making a suggestion for a new giant carrot boss and had a mocked up sprite, then the thread could include text tags such as [Boss] and [Sprite] as in '[Boss][Sprite] New Giant Carrot NPC'.
• This sections provide a means for members to give ideas and feedback on how they think the game should evolve. To accomplish that, one must use, to the best of their ability, proper grammar, punctuation, and structure to more easily facilitate understanding of the suggestion. Well-written and structured posts are easier for the developers and members to understand than walls of text and illogical, rambling, and/or disjointed sentences.
• It is highly recommended that members utilize every tool at their disposal when presenting their suggestion to the community. One of the most important available measures is the thorough use of spell-checking, whether in-browser, through word processing software, or by the quick querying of Google. The very effort of fixing obvious, red-underlined spelling errors goes a long way. Second, don't be afraid to apply some of the available post formatting and text styling options, such as ordered/unordered lists, related links, text alignment, and judicious use of bold, underline, italic, etc. Don't get carried away with formatting, too much can be far, far worse than too little. Lastly, image mock-ups, example sprites, and any other form of relevant demonstration or artwork can be extremely helpful in gaining support for a suggestion. The inclusion of such content is strongly suggested whenever appropriate. After all, the developers could be reading the suggestion, so why not try to impress them?
• While posting each suggestion in its own thread is acceptable, members making several suggestions that are a part of an overall whole or series may want to consider creating a mega-thread with a Portfolio/Multi-Topic prefix to centralize those strongly related suggestions. Portfolio mega-threads are in no way required, but it is a useful feature to consider.
• A member may bump their own threads under the condition that there is a significant amount of information being added to the suggestion and a reasonable amount of time has passed since their last post. Bumping with little to no new information or for the purpose of raising a thread to the top of a section is strongly discouraged.

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Criticism Guidelines

Player suggestions, by virtue of being a birthplace of ideas, are perhaps the largest hotbed of disagreements on the forum. Unfortunately, when some people disagree with an idea, they tend to say things in a manner that does not fall in line with the forum's culture. To that end, below are some guidelines to follow when sharing criticism with the author of a suggestion.

• Don't Take Suggestions Too Seriously
  Very few suggestions will ever make their way into the official game, instead most often serving as 'what if' scenarios and entertainment for those that enjoy the creation involved. This is very important to keep in mind and one should never take a suggestion so seriously that they disrespect another member.
• Members Don't Decide What is Unnecessary
  Ultimately, only the developers decide which suggestions are or aren't necessary to the game and it is not the place of any member to tell a suggestion author that their suggestion is pointless or "unnecessary".
  
  If a thread itself is lacking in content or otherwise violates the forum rules, then it should be reported for the community staff to handle. A suggestion being "bad" or unpopular is not a violation of the rules and is not grounds to report the thread. Similarly, posting in a suggestion thread to say that it should be locked is not constructive in any way and will not be tolerated.
  
  A truly "bad' suggestion requires no hate or vehement argument for why it doesn't belong in the game. The developers are smart enough to make the distinction between what does and does not belong in Terraria. In addition, posting in the threads of unsalvageable suggestions accomplishes nothing more than keeping the thread active and drawing more attention to it.
  
  Support, contribute, and 'like' the "good" suggestions, provide constructive criticism to the suggestions that need improvement, and ignore all the "bad" suggestions.
• Constructive Criticism Requires Reasons
  Posting in a suggestion thread simply to voice dislike for the idea is unhelpful and unneeded. Always include reasons for disagreeing with the idea or ways it could be improved. A suggestion could throw off the game balance, disrupt progression, introduce an overpowered item or mechanic, or create any of a million other problems. Provide that information so that the suggestion author might possibly agree and make the suggestion better.
• If You Have Nothing Nice to Say, Don't Say Anything At All
  Far too many people think that criticizing a suggestion offers a free pass to attack and incite other members. This is most certainly not the case and such behavior will not be tolerated.
  
  Criticism is not merely a label to be slapped on displeasure in the hopes of justifying nasty words. Criticism is an art, and it consists of doing all of the above in a positive fashion. Why? Because Criticism is meant to help a person improve. Criticism is meant to be positive by nature and making it negative defeats the very purpose of the criticism. If the intention is not to contribute to an idea in any sort of positive fashion, then simply do not post at all.

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Spoiler: Change Notes

• Removed "no Cthulhu suggestions" rule: 2023/08/31
• Updated section name and links: 2023/07/22
• Fixed formatting: 2023/06/24
• Fixed broken images: 2023/06/17
• Added Criticism Guidelines document group: 2014/10/14
• Published: 2014/09/17

 

[Leinfors]

Good Afternoon everyone!

So its been a few months, everyone seems to have settled in here on the forums as well as here in the Suggestion section. It feels like most of the crosspost suggestions from TO have been completed, and its getting into a more regular groove here . . . thus we feel this would be a good time to address some of our concerns in a more formal manner.

One of the biggest changes we hoped to accomplish when we made the move from TO to TCF was to improve the quality of the forum decorum and respectful behavior towards each other. And overall, we have made significant strides in that regard. However, the Suggestions section still has a lot of lingering hostility and negativity that we've seen far too often - both on TO and here. Frankly, there are still quite a few threads where people are posting excessive amounts of insults, disrespect, and snarky/sarcastic insults towards suggestions, and it is time steps were taken to address it.

With that in mind, we are going to be implementing a new standard of expectations when posting in the Suggestions section, which will go into effect on the 20th of January. Of course, the global Terraria forum rules always apply, and this is only a supplement to the above Suggestion forum rules.
It would be impossible to detail the exact specifics of what we will be considering poor posting etiquette because it is such a broad area, so I will be detailing a number of examples and types of posting that we will be discouraging moving forward. Additionally, you will be able to discuss the new rules or ask questions about them here: http://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/suggestion-forum-rules-section.9303/ Please post there if you have any comments or uncertainty about what these rules will mean.

- Trollish or meme-like rejections = There are an abundance of threads which are inundated with content-less negative comments like "nopenopenopenope" or "Just no". This kind of negative dismissal indicates one thing to me: that you aren't interested enough to post constructive feedback, but - for some reason - you still want to get in some sort of jab at the poster to express your displeasure. Even if you continue on to give feedback, there is no need for this kind of curt expression of disrespect. If you don't like a suggestion, say why. Say "I don't like this suggestion, because-" while taking care to be respectful of the person making the suggestion.

- Sarcastic remarks, snarky insults, and personal attacks = There is a unsettled trend where unpopular suggestions seem to gain a sort of unfriendly momentum, and posters move past rejection and begin to attack and belittle the poster. At no point are personal attacks on these forums ever welcome. Making snide or sarcastic comments out of an intent to shame the poster in order to express just how much distaste you have for a suggestion just isn't necessary. Remember; you don't have to post. If you do post, you are expected to post constructive content without breaking forum rules. Accusing "bad" suggestions of being joke suggestions seems to be a new trend along this line. Just because you find a suggestion unrealistic, consider that you have probably read about dozens, if not hundreds of different suggestions. The person making the post may not have that level of experience, so they do not realize how unrealistic their idea is . . . calling it a "joke" suggestion just isn't necessary.

- Excessive insults targeting towards the suggestion = Sometimes, a suggestion rolls around that really is just bad. This doesn't grant you permission to start tearing it down as brutally as possible. Phrases like "this suggestion is worthless/pointless" or "worst suggestion ever" or "worst idea I've ever seen" help nothing and noone - and thus really have no place here. There is also see abuse of the word "unoriginal" . . . while its not going to be against the rules to use it, try to think of more eloquent, constructive ways of saying it. To someone new to these forums, they may not necessarily know that certain things have been suggested in many forms before. Rather than tear them down, consider politely directing them towards those previous suggestions.

- Getting into excessive, heated flame-wars over suggestions = We get it. The poster of the suggestion has one opinion, you have another. The two of you just can't seem to convince each other, no matter what you say. But you know what? There is no need for you two to fight, because suggestions will be judged on their merits by the Relogic Staff, not based on the outcome over your internet war. This goes for the suggestion poster as well as those providing feedback - this only serves to land both parties in trouble more often than not. You don't need to fight until the other side backs down. Express your concerns over the suggestion, elaborate some if needed, and then move on. The issues you raise will be seen and considered by those who ultimately make the final decision!

Admittedly, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The issues are a lot more pervasive than this, and its going to take time for people to learn what we will be allowing moving forward. Because we want people to have time to learn what the new standards of posting will be, this will not be going into effect until the 20th. From now until then, I will be spending a lot of time in the section, and when I find posts or suggestions which have gotten derailed into unpleasant hate fests, I will be reminding people of the new rules and why the posts within are an issue, rather than handing out warnings. Posts made before the 20th will not be subject to possible moderator action based on the new rules - because, as I said, this is a change long in coming and we want to give people time to adapt.

It seems that a lot of posters have either gotten far too impatient with suggestions, or that they've lost sight of the point of this section. This section exists so that people can propose suggestions for possible implementation into the game, and in the mean time, receive feedback on how to improve the suggestion for maximum impact. Remember that nobody is perfect, and that everyone has to be new sometime. Try to be a little more patient with those newer posters . . . and if you just can't, then refrain from posting at all.

Insults and hostility never did anyone any good at all, and it sets a negative tone for newer posters to follow. We want this section, along with the forum as a whole, to be a pleasant place to be, where people can share their ideas without fear of insult or attack. We can't do that unless everyone works together to make this a more friendly and cooperative place.

Again, if you have any questions, comments, concerns or wish any clarification, just post here and we can discuss it at your leisure: http://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/suggestion-forum-rules-section.9303/