Why haven't there been official polls to see where the community stands on important issues like cosmetic gear, pets, voice chat etc? I've seen a staff member say that the userbase is split 50/50 on some of these issues but how do they know that, by reading the forums? That proves nothing, in fact some groups just shout louder than others. Some people on this forum may never play the game much while others who will play never post here. It's not always an accurate place to judge community feedback.
I propose that anonymous polls are given to everyone who has pledged money to the game to see where they stand on certain issues, at least when beta arrives. I think the developers might be surprised that some matters are less split in opinion than they thought.
Draulius said:some groups just shout louder than others. Some people on this forum may never play the game much while others who will play never post here. It's not always an accurate place to judge community feedback.
I think you've just answered your own question ;)
Polls are just as susceptible to vocal minorities and silent majorities as posts. And they have the added disadvantage that seeing "your side" ahead of the "other side" in a simple bar chart that doesn't really explain the arguments promotes feelings of entitlement. Plus, polls usually present as false dichotomies - it's either this way or that way - suppressing possible alternatives.
At the end of the day, I pledged to Pantheon because I trust the developers to make the right calls, and post in the forums to contribute in what small way I can.
daemonios said:Draulius said:some groups just shout louder than others. Some people on this forum may never play the game much while others who will play never post here. It's not always an accurate place to judge community feedback.I think you've just answered your own question
It wouldn't be a forum poll. It'd be a poll that all backers can vote on, perhaps given out via e-mail. Much different.
From Kilsin:
"To be honest, they really are not needed, polls are used to focus your thoughts into a small and restricted pool of possible answers, whereas I gather information from an open-ended and much larger pool of possible answers where you folks are free to speak your mind without restriction on the development forums, if I change that and force you all into a very small closed chain of possible answers that I create, it isn't giving me the best possible spread of answers, ideas and feedback to pass on to the Devs, it is not a true representation of what you actually think or feel and creates a false positive.
I would much rather continue with the open nature and freedom of the forums to gather unrestricted ideas and feedback, like I have been doing for the last few years, it is a lot more work for me but it is a lot more accurate and therefore valuable to me.
We have fun with polls every now and then on Twitter and probably will mess around with them for fun or with CM content on the new forums but we would prefer asking you specific questions and gathering your unique ideas and feedback around that specific question than forcing a few options on to you and limiting your potential to give feedback that we may not have thought of, if that makes sense."
Source: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/5187/option-to-add-polls-for-our-threads
daemonios said:Thanks for the quote, Bazgrim.
@Draulius, sorry for messing up my post, I'm typing on my phone and inserted a smiley from the virtual keyboard which cut all text after it on my post, I've edited to read as it was supposed to originally.
I think since polls are much easier to do and are more anonymous they suffer less from the silent majority problem.
Draulius said:daemonios said:Thanks for the quote, Bazgrim.
@Draulius, sorry for messing up my post, I'm typing on my phone and inserted a smiley from the virtual keyboard which cut all text after it on my post, I've edited to read as it was supposed to originally.
I think since polls are much easier to do and are more anonymous they suffer less from the silent majority problem.
Perhaps. But they still suffer from it in some way, and clearly from the other point regarding a closed pool of possible answers, as pointed out in Kilsin's quote.
I would add that even majority decisions aren't necessarily the best ones. I've seen other games go certain ways to please the majority of the player base, to the exclusion of others, in the end hurting the game.
Case in point: difficulty. In my last MMO, both open world and instance difficulty was scaled back enormously in response to player feedback, to the point that basically anything in the open world was soloable at the same level as the player, if not even quite a few levels below it. Instanced content at normal difficulty became a faceroll for good players, with many 4-man dungeons becoming soloable. At veteran difficulty, good players could equally faceroll them with 2 or 3-person groups instead of the 4-person groups they were created for. The only actual challenge in group content was 12-man trials, and even then there were only two trials that even good groups struggled to beat at veteran difficulty, mostly because they became DPS races. Either you downed a boss in x minutes or the group would wipe, simple as that. In the mean time, most of the player base still struggled with group content, even at normal difficulty, because the decrease in difficulty hadn't forced them to give a moment's thought to gear choices and skill rotation, let alone the fact that there was such thing as boss mechanics. So, the decision to scale back difficulty ruined the game for many players and didn't even achieve the goal of making certain content more accessible.
Pantheon isn't a community project. There's a development team whose job is to think about the whole game rather than certain groups, however representative. Of course this means they'll have to find balances and compromises to appeal to a diverse player base, but the developers' perspective is necessarily different from that of a player who votes in a poll according to their personal taste and interests, and who might not consider, or even be aware of, other people's viewpoints.
daemonios said:I would add that even majority decisions aren't necessarily the best ones. I've seen other games go certain ways to please the majority of the player base, to the exclusion of others, in the end hurting the game.
Quoted for emphasis. It is not VR's top priority to please as many people as possible. Nor should it be. They are building the game in the way that they think is best for their target audience. And there are a lot of factors that go into that. It's a lot more complicated than just seeing what the majority of people want and then going with that.
I agree that polls have limited value.
When a poll is put up to get the pulse of the community it tends to become a point of contention rather than a path to a solution. As others have mentioned, who responds does not often represent who will play, or even represent a majority of those who will play. Many people don't see the point in responding, don't want to bother reading the poll in order to respond, or don't want their responses to be recorded for whatever reason. The problem is that the poll results become ammo people use to silence those who's responses weren't in the majority of respondents ("The poll proves most people want it so you don't know what you're talking about!"), or it becomes a bone of contention used against the devs ("The poll proves the majority of people want this specific mechanic, and you devs are ignoring us!").
And there's the old adage that thru their own ignorance people often demand that which is counter to their interests. Just because people want it doesn't mean it would make a good game. Look at most of the things on the market now. People, generally speaking, demand things that make it easier for them to achieve. Ease of success normally runs counter to a sense of accomplishment. Any of a myriad of mechanics very common in MMOs these days would probably come up high on the list of desirable mechanics. Doesnt mean that they would contribute to a game I want to play.
Bazgrim said:From Kilsin:
"To be honest, they really are not needed, polls are used to focus your thoughts into a small and restricted pool of possible answers, whereas I gather information from an open-ended and much larger pool of possible answers where you folks are free to speak your mind without restriction on the development forums, if I change that and force you all into a very small closed chain of possible answers that I create, it isn't giving me the best possible spread of answers, ideas and feedback to pass on to the Devs, it is not a true representation of what you actually think or feel and creates a false positive.
I would much rather continue with the open nature and freedom of the forums to gather unrestricted ideas and feedback, like I have been doing for the last few years, it is a lot more work for me but it is a lot more accurate and therefore valuable to me.
We have fun with polls every now and then on Twitter and probably will mess around with them for fun or with CM content on the new forums but we would prefer asking you specific questions and gathering your unique ideas and feedback around that specific question than forcing a few options on to you and limiting your potential to give feedback that we may not have thought of, if that makes sense."Source: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/5187/option-to-add-polls-for-our-threads
Thank you, Baz :)
As Baz kindly quoted my reply and due to the fact that typing "Polls" into the search function will show several threads with the answer to this question, I will have to go ahead and close it, please type keywords into the search function prior to creating a new thread so we can keep existing threads going and contain the topics for easy to find, read and gather information :)