You are suffering from the Dunning-Krueger effect. You don’t know enough about coding cycles in business, but don’t know that you don’t know, so you feel like you know (ya know?). If the game was that well thought out (i.e. “We know the features we’ll be adding in 5 years, so lets plan for them now.”), then having any sort of a “suggestions” forum would be totally ineffectual as anything new wouldn’t be in the plan and if they did add it, it would mess up the “Well designed from the ground up” methodology that they instilled.
Changes that seem simple from the user perspective are rarely simple from a coding perspective. Have you considered that filtering may be an issue on one of the platforms but not the others (Steam vs iOS vs Android)? I know from experience that getting code changes through the iTunes/iOS store is a bloody nightmare. Apple inspects every line of code changes and will reject apps for stupid reasons (My company once had a release rejected because our submitted documentation for the appstore had a screenshot that had the word ‘demo’ in it, even though that folder was included in every app as a training demo. Their rules prohibit releasing “demo” versions of software). Add that to the fact that the interface for Steam is vastly different than the interface of either mobile platform, so not only does the change need to be coded 3 times, but 1 of the 3 has to have a vastly different UI, but still maintain a sense of consistency across all 3 platforms.
Another potential issue is scheduling. There are only so many development hours per sprint. If a change like you are suggesting I would aggressively estimate at 24-40 man-hours to fully implement (not counting QA hours). Besides the sorting algorithms, there is the UI interface, the image design (as the framing and backgrounds will no longer fit) and other considerations that will pop-up as it’s coded. That’s most to all of a week for a developer assuming perfect progress. Realistically, it would probably be longer as aggressive estimates almost always under-shoot.
That leads to prioritization. Which other item(s) are getting bumped from the sprint for this to enter? There are only so many coders, which means there is a finite amount of hours. Do they bump some bug fixes? Do they bump new character design? How about special events? New PvE stories? Will this change affect revenue (either positively or negatively)? Will the bumped items affect revenue more? They need to turn profits in order to pay their developers, designers, server admins, hardware costs, licenses, etc… As much as people complain about companies being “only about the money”, they kind of have to be or else they can’t pay people to make the game.
I do software development for a living (though not in the gaming market) in both the mobile and web platforms. The 2 most feared words we hear from customers are “simply” and “just”. As in “Simply add this feature” or “Just make this change”. It’s a tell-tale sign that the people making those statements have little knowledge of the work it takes to make a professional* project nor do they have realistic expectations.
*professional is the key here. I could throw together a sort in minutes, but it wouldn’t be robust, consistent with game’s UI nor varied enough to be useful for enough of the player base to be truly useful.
/I would love to see a filter. I’ve asked for it many times, but insulting the developers by unfairly minimizing the effort and/or criticizing their work is not the best way to get your request fulfilled.
