Update Suggestion Board Rules

Suggestions are loads of fun to create. There's hundreds to look through, and they're awesome to read and comment on as a community.

I've noticed a lot of "this isn't necessary," "this would be difficult to code," etc. While it's important to voice your opinion on what's added to the game it's equally as important to remember that we are not the final deciding factor in what gets added, or how.

Suggestions are just that. Suggestions. They may not be implemented in exactly the same way it's first presented - one idea can spark another. That's okay! Suggestions are posted to gain the feedback of the community, but they are not added by mass popularity alone.

It's important to remember voting yes is not a declaration nor a promise that you would personally use the game mechanic, base, UI change, QOL update, etc. It's about deciding if it would positively or negatively impact the game for the community as a whole, including you.

Voting no because "I personally wouldn't use this", "I don't breed this genetics group," "I have a different way of doing it," and comments similar are not helpful when trying to implement things for the broad playerbase. If you think something being implemented is detrimental to the game you can say that! Arguing that you personally would not use something does not speak for the playerbase as a whole. There's lots of great QOL/UI updates out there that not everyone will use but benefit a good chunk of the active players.

What am I suggesting?

I'd like to see stricter rules regarding the etiquette and commentary on threads. Telling someone their suggestion is useless to you does not decide for the rest of the site, nor the admins.

1) I do not believe people should be allowed to mention the potential difficulty in coding. This is entirely up to the admins to decide. There is no reason to flood suggestion comments with speculation on coding possibilities.

2) I do not believe people should be allowed to speculate how admins would feel about suggestions unless it is disrespectful (in which case you should be reporting the thread, anyway.) Simply give your own insight on whether or not a suggestion would negatively or positively impact you or the market.

What kind of comments am I against, specifically?

• Comments about what isn't necessary for the experience on the site, especially when speaking for admins instead of in personal opinion. Again, it's important to voice your opinions and collect feedback. That's how we improve. What isn't helpful is speaking for the admins on what they would or would not add. Unless previously suggested or touched on and confirmed to be ruled out there's no point in saying this. If it was suggested someone found it helpful/interesting.

• Telling someone something would be way too hard to code (or "too difficult", "more work than it's worth", etc.) I see this often. Phenomenal suggestions are shot down by their difficulty level rather than what it entails. As stated before, suggestions are suggestions and may not be added in exactly the same way. If admins saw it worth the effort they would either code it in or simplify it to be implemented more seamlessly. Users are not the ones doing the coding and don't decide what is and isn't possible.

• Telling players to find other alternatives to their suggestion (i.e. through bookmarks, clans, or other means like community features rather than a built in function.)

This thread is not meant to discourage open discussion and player ideas through thread comments. I understand that sometimes great ideas happen in the comments. Friendly discussion about how best to include new features will always be welcomed.

Off-site inspiration

Other pet-sim breeding games have similar rules. I won't be mentioning specific names since I believe I cannot talk about other similar sites here (other than wolvden), but these types of rules are implemented already on similar games and I feel as though it makes for better suggestion discussion and community interaction.

Thank you for reading!