Privacy policies and community overreactions are definitely existent, the latter of the two being more...prevalent.

I could understand if the devs/GMs might not even want to talk to us as a community because of how awful they're being treated by some members. Just a thought.

Despite a GM appearing here the lack of any real communication is a bit disheartening.

Even something such as a simple "Hello, us GMs greatly enjoy reading the suggestions the community comes up with. We can't publicly say whether we approve or disapprove an idea since it is prohibited by company policy. Rest assured that we actively read the suggestions even if we can't talk about them with the players"

Lol this thread is a perfect example of why GMs don't post in suggestions' forums. Luckily this thread is kind of meta anyways so it's not detracting from the conversation, but if this were any other suggestions thread it'd quickly be derailed into "omg admin post get the camera".

Sort of makes me wish I had access to the April Fool's forum so I could be all goofy in those silly conversations.

I wonder if the storyboard is a limiting factor. Takes a bit of time to roll out a storyline, and we all know how Sonic 06 turned out.
I get the feeling that Three Rings might be at work on written plot along with level design. Breaking In The Recruits, while a nice challenge and design, was really odd in terms of story. We have no explanation of how Monsters were able to assume the guise of Strangers, nor do we know why the Collector was there.
Not to say that BITR was bad in any way; I thouroughly enjoyed it. It just seemed a bit rushed, and that's one of the reasons I'm giving Three Rings all the time they need to roll out another update.

Hexzyle, that's the point. If OOO doesn't care about how brilliant your idea is regarding a particular topic, it's a waste of the community's time to continue talking about it.
If an idea isn't well suited, it should be shot down. If only part of it is problematic, only part of it should be shot down. The rest can be left to grow into something else. Right now we have certain types of topics being recycled again and again because there is absolutely no feedback. We don't have any clue if we're helping or if we're just bringing up useless ideas.

Some things we do want to have a voice on. For example, I'm not against dual wielding weapons, I am against how most people would implement it however. A weapon taking over your shield is lazy in concept, and without a lot of hard coding would be really broken - such as each weapon having separate weapon animation cooldowns, essentially never having to reload as a gunner or pause swinging as a swordsman, and offense typically being better than defense - plus shield canceling would be thrown out the window.

I love new takes on dual wielding, such as the one that it's a singular weapon that makes your knight put their shield on their back, but takes it back out for the acheron you brought. I also love the idea of a parrying blade or a weaponized shield acting as a sort of "dual wield".

So it's not always the regulars being against the idea, but rather us being against the idea being presented in its presented form.

And lastly I would love to have more developer input, or heck even GM input, however I'd love if they just made quips of something to the extent of "Cool idea!", "We've been working on something internally like this for a while; what do you think of this rendition?", or "Sadly this isn't something we can insert into the game in its current state, but it isn't a bad idea!"
Suggestion examples for each of these being a new PvP mode for the first one, arcade redux/scenario room rehaul for the second one, and a first person knight mode for the third one.

I'd love for the developers to share our ideas, but I don't want them to ensure any ideas, or flat out reject any ideas. Seeing something you put a lot of time and effort into suggesting being shot down is disheartening, and often having it ignored is better than having every and anyone tell you your idea is terrible and not fitting in the game. On the other side of the same coin, being told "we really like this idea and are going to put it into the game" will kill all discussion about said idea since it is now "in the game", and also create a lot of sad people if the idea turns out to be a flop.

Tying in and mediating Fangel's, Deleted's, and Fehzor's points, Three Rings staff input would definitely be appreciated on suggestion posts. Otherwise it's a recycled chain of ideas that people periodically re-suggest without knowing it. Something like, "We've actually seen this idea before, and it sounds interesting" would let players know that the moderators were listening without necessarily having to commit to anything. Granted, mod interaction doesn't have to be on every single post, but if it's been positively recieved by the community and sounds like a reasonable venture, it would be nice to have a mod pop in every now and then and give noncommittal input on ideas.

And as far as knowing the mods are listening, we're doing okish in that regard. It's just the "input" part that I wish the moderators would or even could partake in. They might be legally bound to secrecy.
Far as Aphy's ellipsis, there's a myriad of things that could possibly be conveyed through it.
>>One, it could be disappointment or even frustration at the community. We may have been doing something wrong.
>>Two, it could be an affirmation that the mods are still paying attention to the forums.
>>Three, something else entirely. The issue is that, while mod replies are generally supposed to be at least a small bit cryptic, this one wasn't very well understood. That could be a bad thing, especially if theory 1 is correct.

That's fair too. People simply don't check to see if their idea is original; I'm guilty of this as well.

Non-committal mod input on new, fresh ideas would definitely be appreciated though, and I've seen a few that were pretty well thought-out. Anything that renews the link between admin and player in the forums that we all but lost a few years back would be nice to have.
But again, privacy policy is respectable. I just wish we knew why they don't say much anymore, and if it does have something to do with us as users, I want to know how to fix it.