I'm a software developer myself so I wouldnt say "hopelessly ignorant on the subject". And I'm not claiming to have perfect knowledge of the inner workings of bioware or how they setup their dev teams since I do not work for them. None of this is even relevant though - my core suggestion relates to providing a more visual representation of community feedback - that's all. How bioware handle this feedback would be entirely up to them. I stated specifically that they wouldn't have to treat it any differently to current forum feedback, so BW employees who DO know all the ins and outs of how they work and what is achievable in relation to how they have setup their game can decide what to do with the information. Again I fail to see your point here. My suggestion specifically involves looking at what everyone finds important. Do you think I want 1000 votes for myself and 1 for everyone else? Therefore what I find important is no more or less relevant than what other players find important - it would only be the combined opinions of the majority that would be regarded important (i.e. the suggestions with a significant vote count). Again all I'm suggesting is an additional tool to help the developers do their job and make this game a success, a tool that I believe would help give a more accurate representation of what the majority of the community want, which is surely useful information for the developers and the people making decisions about how to take the game forward.

Yea exactly my thoughts. I understand the dev team is split into teams and that it isnt easy to just say x % should be working on this, but a genre like this can only benefit from a more agile work approach which would help BW react better to what the consumer actually wants.

I'm not saying every suggestion would have to be implemented, There is no "decide" in it really, other than deciding if they like an idea or not. Its just another way of displaying the community feedback thats already in the forums in a more quantifiable way rather than post upon post of crap. It doesnt have to be treated any more seriously than forum feedback currently is, it simply makes it easier to analyse and lets us put a bit of presure on the devs in terms of what the majority seem to actually want. Surveys do this to some extent but a votebox would be better and more dynamic. I'm not referring to balance issues either; I mean more feature specific updates, such as a new x style warzone, open world capturable towns, guild ships, etc etc. Just to give one additional resource to bw for deciding the priority to approach updates, as I'm fed up seeing so many changes that just seem to be wasting developer time at the moment when there are so many other things that should be implemneted first. I can see where you're coming from RE the quality of community feedback, but if each reader has the ability to + or -, most of the rubbish would remain low and out of sight. Only updates with a significant following and want would be considered, and if that many people want something then it's fair enough to consider imo. Even if it was only dev suggestions to vote on it would be better than it is now. I just find it hard to believe that enough people truely care about legacy crap and new flashpoints and so on over more pressing PVP issues such as complete lack of world pvp, still no ranked wz, etc.

You could also implement it as a "heat" style system instead (similar to hotukdeals.com), in that each suggestion can be voted for/hot or against/cold, rather than only voted for. Then everyone can either + or - an idea.

Yes suggestions and opinions are already out there but they are burried amongst 1000s of posts, trolls, walls of text etc. This method of handling suggestions would be so much easier to track and visualise. It would also appeal more to people who stay away from the forums as they could not be bothered reading through pages and pages of whine and trolling. With this approach you can see how popular suggestions are with the community in one glance rather than spending hours reading and analysing forum feedback.

Implement a system where players can vote on which updates they would like implemented. This would help give the dev team a better understanding of what people want implemented in the game. At the moment I think a lot of the patches are focusing on issues that are not that important to the majority of players. Ideally the suggestions would come from a combination of the community and the developers. Every user gets 1 vote and if they like an idea they vote for it. Then everyone can see which features people want the most. This should not be static and limited like a survery - it should be a constant feature that is always running. If an update gets implemented then it can be marked as complete. See the following as an example https://todoist.com/Vote/