My Feedback for the Minecraft Feedback Website

Perhaps one of the best things about Minecraft is the fact the developers listen to the collective fanbase. A feature, such as the Dripleaf plant, can be added with certain mechanics, such as the Dripleaf plant not tilting if you crouch on it. Fans wish this wasn't the case, and next week we see they have removed that feature.

This is great as it feels like the game itself changes based on what the fanbase wants to see. Sure, ultimately they decide what features do and don't get added, but we can offer how we feel about certain aspects of that feature.

The devs work so closely with the community there is even a dedicated feedback website where players can request new features and give feedback on old changes. What other game actually has a whole feedback forum for the fans to post their desires for the game?!?

This feedback website sounds incredible for us fans........... in theory.

On paper, this feedback site sounds incredible. But the reality is..... slightly less rosy.

I've used the feedback website many times, and most of the time I'm finding myself frustrated with the website.

Time To Post Some New Feedback!!! Uhh... Where's the Button?

Let's first talk about the user interface. It HAS gotten a lot better than it used to be, but I still find it difficult to locate the buttons to actually post new feedback. When you are viewing a particular category, there is no clear "give feedback" button. There is a rather hidden link where it says "Vote for an existing idea or Post new feedback" at the top. The thing is, people in this view are not going to find that very easily. It doesn't stand out in any way. It's in small black print near the top of the page, between large text displaying the category, and a bunch of buttons below that allow you to select filters. A small piece of text seems incredibly unimportant and is likely to be skipped. And yes, the "post new feedback" part is in green, but it's a very dark green with the black text and still very unnoticeable. There really needs to be a more clear button in this view.

You can also add new feedback by selecting the "Categories" dropdown. There, the "Add new feedback" is a lot more clear, but again, you'd never think to look there if you wanted to post new feedback. 

On the main page, there also isn't an "Add new feedback" button. You can see the most popular feedback items, and there are two large green buttons that read "Help Center" and "Report Bugs". Okay, great, but this is the feedback website. Where's the big green button to carry out the action you came here for - to give feedback? Nope. That's hidden amongst the "Categories" dropdown on the top navbar.

What I also find odd is that if you view the "announced" feedback and "under review" feedback, from the main page, there IS a green button in the top left that says "Give feedback". Why is there one on these pages but not the category pages??? Why is it that on a category page you have to seek out that relatively hidden link???

There It Is! Time to Submit Some Feedback!

Okay, so you've finally managed to treasure-hunt some form of getting to post new feedback. The form itself is actually very clear. You have to give your suggestion a title, and then describe it below. It's just like making a Reddit post. Then you have to select the topic. The feedback site offers lots of different categories, which is good. The vast array of categories isn't too large, but it covers every aspect of Minecraft that you'd be giving feedback to. Everything, inside and outside the game, is covered here. It's a good category system.

There are character limits in each field. The title is limited to 75 characters, and the post itself is limited to 1500. These are now displayed on the website, which is good. For the longest time, they weren't and I'd unknowingly run over, without knowing how many I had to remove for the post to submit, for it would simply tell me I was over the maximum of 1500 characters. I'm so glad they have fixed this. This simple change makes so much difference!

So you start filling in the form, starting with the title. And WHOA, the text box below is gone. You're greeted with a bunch of similar suggestions. This is to prevent the same suggestion or feedback being posted over and over again. But the thing is, it TOTALLY REMOVES the other textboxes and category dropdown. And there's NO button to say "Okay" or "My suggestion is original" or anything like that. Again, above this big display of potentially similar ideas, you have to press a green link hidden in small text. It actually took me AGES to realise this. I spent probably a good 10-15 minutes trying to find a way to get my textboxes back. I refreshed several times assuming it was a bug. Do you know why? Because I didn't see the green link that says "Post new feedback" that was part of another sentence in small print. There is NO indication that pressing this link will return the textboxes and make the similar suggestions go away. There is no clear button you can press that shows you've looked at the similar suggestions and wish to proceed! Nope, nothing.

And finally, there is a bug with the categories menu that has never been fixed. And this bug actually led me to discarding an idea because I didn't know how to get around it. When you have filled in the title and idea and selected a category, sometimes the "Submit" button remains greyed out. This tends to happen if you clicked the link from a particular category, and the category was pre-selected. The way to get around this is to select a different category, then re-select the category you want to use. But I didn't know this when I first encountered this. I tried to refresh, and my suggestion was gone. This WAS on me for not copying it before refreshing. But still, this bug has NEVER been fixed, and I think it's a pretty big one.

I've Finally Submitted my Feedback! ...oh where did it go?

And now we've reached the elephant in the room.

Disappearing feedback posts.

I will just come right out and say it. 80% of my posts never made it onto the site at all. They were disappeared without a trace. Presumably "rejected" by the admin team. But with absolutely no reason given. Was it too similar to other suggestions? Did the Mojang team look at it and say "nah"? Did they deem it too unoriginal? Too out there? Too modded?

Do you know why being ghosted on a dating app sucks so much? It's because you never know why. You never know if it's because they found someone they liked more, or if something happened in their life, or if they decided you weren't right for them. Were you too forward? Were you too reserved? You'll never know because they disappear without a trace. You can never learn from the experience, because you are never told exactly why it didn't work.

The same is true here. You are never given any sort of reason or notification that your post has been rejected. It just gets silently rejected. Ghosted in a way. And it is INCREDIBLY frustrating. As you get absolutely no notification when it's been published either, you have to keep checking the post to see if it got approved. And 80% of the time, you'll be met with "This page can't be found", meaning it's been rejected. With absolutely no reason given.

Nowhere does it even indicate the posts go through such strict monitoring. And it really SUCKS that they don't even tell you why your post was rejected. How are you meant to learn from that and better your suggestions when you're basically left guessing what flies and what gets binned?

And yes, I do sometimes have to question their decisions on why perfectly good and simple posts get rejected, whereas literally this morning I saw a post saying "big cities with cars and buses". Seriously. THAT got approved? That would NEVER fit within Minecraft! Why did my suggestion about saltpeter, a way to get gunpowder in Peaceful mode, get rejected, but freaking cars and buses got accepted? Even after Mojang have outright stated modern modes of transport will NEVER be added???

Honestly, the suggestions disappearing without a trace is the worst aspect of the feedback site. They really should give you notifications and a reason why your post was rejected. The fact I know my post is almost certainly going to disappear without a trace with no reason given actually demotivates me from continuing to use the site. Why bother making a suggestion if my post is almost certainly going to just be silently deleted? It's a very negative experience for players who are trying to give feedback when their posts are just silently deleted for no reason. And it's why I almost never use the feedback site anymore.

Is There Any Point to the Feedback Site At All?

Absolutely. I think it's a REALLY great thing Mojang have a feedback website that they read and draw ideas from. The feedback site has come a LONG way since its inception in 2018, where it was nigh-unusable. Before the feedback site, there was no real unified place or method for players to post suggestions and snapshot feedback. Some did so on Reddit, some did so on Twitter, and some made blogs that nobody ever reads. Having a definitive and regulated way to post feedback that guarantees Mojang sees it is incredible, and very uniquely Mojang.

There's just several issues with the feedback site itself that should REALLY be addressed for this good tool to become an amazing one.