Actually it is not if you read the wishlist category rules:
“test stuff properly” isn’t a feature.
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Please also read my edit in response to your original reply. Posted too soon…
I did and I don’t think it really happens that often that threads get closed “arbitrarily”.
At least it’s not something I noticed in the past year on the forums.
I’d be interested in seeing real feature requests being closed for no reason, feel free to add more examples since it seems like you should have plenty.
I do agree that providing more information about the closing would be good.
I was in fact following that topic myself and was surprised and found it disturbing that it was shut down so abruptly and without any apparent valid reason.
To me the basis of the thread was very topical (given the issues with the SU5 update) and was relevant and accumulated quite a lot of votes in the short time period it remained open. I saw no abuse in the thread or any other obvious reason for closure. One can only surmise the reasons for closure.
I agree with the OP here that this very clearly demonstrated a weakness in the voting system. Clearly topics closed down will not accumulate any more votes and neither will they become high profile.
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Agreed.
The mods also closed this thread after it received 200+ votes in less than 24 hours… I think if the community feels so strongly about something that it should be highly considered by the dev team. To me, they closed it too quickly and without giving it a good thought saying it’s ‘not feasible’ whatever that means.
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On way to solve that is to have a section where you can see your votes. Or rather what you have voted on. And so you ca also remove your vote if you so desire. Even on closed/removed topics.
Or
If a post is removed. All the voters get a notification that it has been removed due to duplicate topics. And posible a link to the other one so they can vote for it if they want.
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It basically means that they won’t maintain separate game versions, no matter how many votes a thread gets. It’s an architectural decision and a budgetary one.
If it’s a design decision with no intent of changing it, I’d rather have them clearly state that instead of wasting space in the wishlist snapshot, covering more realistic requests.
But that’s just my opinion.
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I think you might be overestimating the power of votes. There are items on the Dev roadmap with incredibly high vote counts, yet they haven’t moved in a year.
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Given the 200+ votes in less than 24 hours (a record likely), and that other video games do it all the time with no problem I would say that the dev team should re-consider their initial response.
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Yeah, but ultimately it’s their decision. And not necessarily the dev’s but Microsoft’s.
I’m just not seeing the drama that this thread is about.
A few requests were closed for one or another reason. Saying now that a voting system is flawed which worked for a year now without issues is a bit harsh, don’t you think?
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You can do that on your profile page under activity.
To be fair, at least it’s a direct answer and tells us directly what we want to know. What leaves a sour taste in my mouth, is why the voting needs to be cut off? I surely would want to see how many people agree with it, and closing a post like that just seems bad style and damage control, but that’s me…
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No, they’re meant to be able to, but something about the plugin on these forums are bugged. When I was on the mod team we were in communication with the forum devs, I even went as far as to install the forums and voting plugin on a personal server of mine, but we couldn’t repo the issue here.
I do wonder, can that be solved by having additional options on the PC version?
Yes having two versions to make patches, test. etc will cost more. But with additional options they dont need two versions.
That’s going to be a long list then… And if I were a developer, I would prefer to see ONE topic per issue. In these Bugs and Wishlist topics, there is often a lot of other information too.
Yesss, that’s closer to how I would like it… just cancel all the votes on the closed topic, AND send the members who voted a notification… removal is not needed, when a topic is closed, you can’t vote for it. Just give the votes back to the voters.
That’s what they already confirmed to implement. As a direct result from threads like this.
So parts of that already resulted in action, just not the ultimate request as it was formed in the opening post.
If they’d leave it running, people would complain if it was missing in the weekly snapshot. If they’d include it in the snapshot, it would take room which is certainly better spent on items with realistic implementation chance.
I’d wish they’d be as clear in other cases where we’re dragging old requests for a year now without any real intent to have them implement at any realistic point in time.
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So I play the Devil‘s advocate for a moment. Disclaimer: I have no idea why the vote was closed for real, so all that follows is my educated guess.
Already the second reply gave a strong hint that this vote would be closed soon: „Thread will be closed in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1……“.
And the reasons why that was so much to be expected were all given in the subsequent comments, essentially: How do you measure „well-tested“? That is a very subjective - and at the same time very understandable! - wish. But one that could never be fulfilled in an objective manner.
Now I could dive very deep into testing methodologies and all the various levels of the „testing pyramid“. But instead let me illustrate the futility of such a wish in another way: let‘s assume that we would measure the success (or progress) of „well tested“ by „the remaining bugs“ X. Unfortunately X is an „extremely unknown number“, so you have no idea of „how well tested“ (in the given measurement) the software really is.
„But what about counting the number of fixed bugs then?“ you say? Yes, that is a known number. Unfortunately the correlation between the „fixed bugs“ vs the number of „still (unknown) remaining bugs“ is weak (almost non-existing). While this certainly gives an objective measure („we have fixed 1‘000 bugs - enough testing!“) it won‘t produce the desired result either: you could have fixed 1‘000 bugs and yet the 1‘001st bug could be a major deal-breaker which would put the community into an eternal state of shock.
Don’t get me wrong, I totally agree with the wish and fully understand what the poster was asking for! But the wish basically mentions the problem #2 already itself: management. It is just illusional to think that development had any say in the final release date, especially if it is combined with a large XBox release! Sure, development can voice their strong opinion. But they don‘t have the final say.
And third, by formulating such a wish you are basically implying that development is not testing (enough). In fact, it could very well be that testing was neglected (pure speculation, for illustration purposes only!) in favour of getting the XBox release out there - but it is not like development (and management) wouldn‘t know this already.
Releasing software is always a gamble between „beneficial for most users vs a PITA for a few“ - always.
So asking for „well-tested software“ is like asking for „don‘t make any bugs“ or even „do what I mean“. It is very much understandable for us humans, but not „quantifiable/measurable“ - as opposed to a wish like „I want to see fish jumping out of the water“.
Even if voting on a closed topic were still possible, closing a topic reduces it’s visibility and that influences the outcome.
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Fully agree. Nothing to add really.
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Thats how the vote plugin works. If you vote in a topic and it gets closed or archived your vote remains but it no longer counts against your limit.
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