The same custom field may be required in some places (e.g. in some idea portals), but not in others. Customers work around this now by creating two copies of the custom field, one that is required and one that is not.
The required flag should be a setting of the layout so that each layout can customize this setting.
Note that the "Required" flag only applies to idea portal layouts.
ETA?
Is there an ETA?
This would be extremely beneficial as we have teams sharing idea custom fields. Some groups need the field to be required on their idea form whereas others would like it to be optional. Having the option available at the layout phase would reduce duplicate fields.