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Thread: E-Mail Sign up for Istaria Info and Polls

  1. #1

    Default E-Mail Sign up for Istaria Info and Polls

    Hi there,
    I was thinking about many of the changes in the game and how the Forums are used for input on ideas. I do enjoy the opportunity to chime in when necessary, however I don't feel that it is fair to the Community.

    Let me explain. Answering or chiming in on a forum while it's good for dialog can be somewhat challenging to either see something to talk about or with so many people talking and changing the subject hard to understand what the original idea was.

    While I don't think the Forums should ever go away, I do feel that it would be beneficial to have an E-Mail sign up for certain ideas before they get implemented into the game through a sort of Poll E-Mail. They can easily be set up through outlook to be able to vote on something.

    Many of the changes that have upset me in the past could have been avoided through a system like this. This way, all players have equal opportunity to vote in a YES or NO, and you're not relying on a handful of players that visit the forums daily. If you go on vacation for a week or two you don't have to worry about trying to find some obscure thing that in actuality is a major overhaul of something ie. crafting system as an example.

    Thank you,
    -Kor

  2. #2
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    Default Re: E-Mail Sign up for Istaria Info and Polls

    Why not keep it to the forum? This would increase the workload for the devs that look into player feedback. Checking an email in addition to the forums. Polls can be and have been done on the forums so that seems really unnecessary.

    So what you're really asking for is each and every change to notify every single player and force the dev team to wait on a yes/no from everyone before anything can be done. Yeah seems pretty restrictive and not very constructive, especially since it'd dumb down issues to a binary vote rather than being able to argue your point one way or another on a topic or to be able to say 'I'd be fine with X if _____'. Overall this seems to be an unnecessary idea. But that's just my two cents as a casual forum user.

    Istara's Chosen Guildmaster
    Experienced Hunter, Healer, and Grand Master Crafter

  3. #3

    Default Re: E-Mail Sign up for Istaria Info and Polls

    Firstly, forums are good for qualitative feedback, so the devs know WHY the chnages they want to implement are good/bad. Because if you just say "no this is bad" well..what can anyone do about it if we don't know WHY it's bad? xD Because of this element, proposals for changes have been changed, into better proposals. Granted, you aren't suggesting the forums should be away, but I would worry that a poll to some could potentially make them think "i gave my answer in a poll, i don't need to give any more feedback" and stop them from expressing their actual opinion.


    Secondly, there's also the issue of the ummm..."change" bias people experience. not an actual word, just something i made up, but this kind of bias people feel when a change comes along that they're not used to, and they automatically say "that's bad :/" even if it's a beneficial change...ex: sprint change from 5 min timer to what it is now, shortening sprint effect, but overall increase in the amount of time sprint effect is active for over the space of 5 minutes. It was a hugely beneficial change and yet people opposed it initially (myself included, whoops)...i call that change bias.

    If this bias isn't challenged then sometimes we never realise that change is even beneficial...And change bias also means that things like the changes to sprint will have earnt a huge "no" vote despite being beneficial and therefore may have not been implemented depending on how much the devs consider such a vote to be a mandate.

    And even if it isn't a binding decision, some people would look at these polls, see it was a massively opposed change and ask "then why did it get implemented??????" and get angry over that - when in reality, that was just because of change bias and few still hold the views they had at the time of vote.

    In fact, change bias is one of the biggest issues this suggestion faces IMO.


    Thirdly, a yes/no ignores the extent to which one supports it, and neutral votes. I could REALLY hate a change and leave istaria because of it, or I could dislike a change but i'll live & get used to it (and change bias too) - all 3 would have me saying "no" yet one of those is obviously a more concerning no than the other 3. And while you could say add a "scale of agreement" (e.g. highly agree, agree) people usually answer those in relative - for example - i hate proposal A, B and C. I would consider unsubbing because of changes A and B, and C i hate a lot, but wouldn't leave istaria from. So I say i highly disagree with A and B, and just disagree with C. Another person would not leave istaria for any of those proposals, but hates proposal B the most, and they put highly disagree with B and disagree with A and C.
    In this scenario, highly disagree means "ill leave istaria if you do this" to me, and it means "i really dislike this but i may be able to get used to it" to another person...So what can the devs take from that?


    Fourthly, email is a very annoying and tedious format for any poll to be set up on, for the devs and players alike. Especially since there's multiple email services people commonly use so you can't just have an outlook poll, because anyone using gmail can't use it, and vice versa, and it's incredibly inconvenient to count the amount of emails with "yes" in them versus "no" in the them if you take from multiple providers.

    IMO - best solution to this is an istaria account, when signing up, automatically creates a forum account for you and then forum polls are linked on the news section of the launcher/announced as the welcome meessage when you log in/linked also from the community page which has the updates on it.


    Fifth point, how much in % should the devs accept as a majority - as a relative majority of those who answered the poll, or an absolute majority of the playerbase (infact, how would one define playerbase - all subs that are paid for? those who've logged in in the past year?) People who don't care much don't tend to vote, but how can we differ those situations from when people do care but don't know how to vote or refused to vote because the available options did not suit them?


    And sixth, should the devs accept such a poll as a mandate to/or not to act - or that is, should they accept such a poll as a binding decision. If it were a binding decision, then change bias suddenly becomes incredibly dangerous and holds back the game...


    Oh, and seventh, polls are static. You can't change them once you set the question. This is a problem as dev proposals change a lot. So say, one poll is set up "Would you like change x with y conditions?" and thats a vote, simple enough...feedback comes in, they change the proposal to "Would you like change x with z conditions?" and then it gets confusing and more so for the next poll with another set of conditions about the same issue and so on - multiple polls for the same issue, and people will inevitably not realise that the conditions changed between each and may think it's an accidental repeat of the same question and so give a repeat answer when if they looked closer, they might change their opinion.

    Actually speaking of change of opinion, that's a thing too - I may think "no" at the time of the poll, discuss it and then think actually "yes" (and vice versa)...but i already voted and i can't change that now. An especially large issue as most proposals for changes happen months/years before they happen, lots of time for people to change their opinions. How do you combat that?
    Last edited by Azath; February 21st, 2017 at 12:23 AM.

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