PC Voting system 7 days

[Limdood]

Well, I wrote. That the polling system would be nice to integrate into the game itself. So that people playing can evaluate each item, etc. etc.

Wait, you want to interrupt people while they're doing what they want in order to barrage them with questions.

What do you think of people who canvass parking lots for polls or petitions while you're trying to go somewhere? Do you like reading the EULA in games? What if you HAD to? and then answer the questions it was asking before you play?

Oh...it's not before you play? It's an optional screen/menu that people can go to, but they don't need to, they could just choose to ignore it and play the game? Then you're right back to the problem with optional polls. They only appeal to the dissatisfied who are looking for an outlet to change things. If I loved everything about the game, why would I give up time that I was looking to spend playing it to answer questions?

Also the simplicity of a question does not preclude or determine the leading nature or bias of the question.

The question you asked...Do you think that zombies are very few? (this is a yes or no question, by the way)

What do you mean? Do you mean zombies overall in the game? Zombies in POIs (which, In a17 would sometimes have like 16 zombies packed into a 1 family home)? Zombies in the wilderness? Are you asking about the horde sizes? The wandering horde sizes? Are you asking about specific biomes? Are we ignoring or counting the wasteland? What constitutes "very few?" Early game? late game? mid game? Are you asking from a gameplay standpoint? a lore standpoint? a graphics standpoint? a performance standpoint?

Your simple question is packed with dozens of places for people to assume what you mean and answer WILDLY differing questions from what you just asked.

 

[hotpoon]

So trite, but there will be no more messages that one person speaks for everyone.

Yes, this is a great point. The devs have no obligation to do whatever the majority wants them to do, however, a poll should prevent certain snarky comments from certain snarky people insinuating that certain people are just 'squeaky wheels', 'or 'the vocal minority'.

I would venture a guess that those who argue against having the poll are the ones who suspect that their opinion will be in the minority and then they can't keep using those prior mentioned snarky responses.

Also your point of introducing the poll into the game itself, further ensures better feedback. I suspect that some users have more than 1 forum profile, so voting in the forum alone could be a bit skewed. If the voting were in-game, you would need to own multiple copies of the game to have multiple opinions, which I think is fair.

 

[grieferbastard]

I will just leave this here:


Show me a job where you can earn more than 400k a year in the private sector. That is ~35k a month.

And I was extremely nice with my /25 proposal. Since TFPs get the lion share which means they get MUCH more than that.

So telling us this is just about the passion, when MM himself stated multiple times that it IS about the money (and about passion, but more as an afterthought) is silly. That is why I pointed this out.

I do not blame MM or TFPs. Money is nice. I just wanted to show that his statement was big big bullocks!

So wait a second, are you saying that TFP has paid everyone on staff 400k a year?

That would be amazing - and possibly one of, like, 3 or 4 examples, at most, of that approach to profit sharing in not just gaming but small business in general.

 

[grieferbastard]

I can’t imagine any poll that would show that people think there were too many wilderness zombies. TFP didn’t reduce them in response to player wishes, they reduced them for performance reasons. Please provide your source for this premise you keep using for your point.

This. In a nutshell, exactly this but on the whole game scale.

If polled players would say "I want better game performance and optimization!" However TFP needs to decide what options for doing that match their available time and resource commitments and what their relative return is.

So why even poll it? There certainly are some design decisions where a bit of player feedback isn't bad the reality in design is that the players are not in a position to really understand what the options are. If polled players would all want a big slice of cake to hold and also eat, without having to give up anything required to get either.

 

[Brian9824]

Well, I wrote. That the polling system would be nice to integrate into the game itself. So that people playing can evaluate each item, etc. etc.
And about the juggling of meaning in the question, well, that's another question. I think people are able to vote in simple polls right into the game. For example, do you think that zombies are very few, do you think that zombies are very many, and so on. This is not a solution. It will simply be statistics, for clarity, no more.

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Sorry, but reducing the size of the gate does not equal removing the gate.

We will have to agree to disagree on this one. Since nothing stops how you choose to spend your points unlike in A17 when you couldn't spend points until you hit an arbitrary level i'd consider that a level gate.

I've yet to talk to a single person aside from yourself who considers stat requirements a level gate (in part because there is no level minimum involved anymore)

But even if you just want to claim that the level gate was reduced its still far better then the previous system which was clearly shown by that poll you want to use as some sort of proof.

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This. In a nutshell, exactly this but on the whole game scale.
If polled players would say "I want better game performance and optimization!" However TFP needs to decide what options for doing that match their available time and resource commitments and what their relative return is.

So why even poll it? There certainly are some design decisions where a bit of player feedback isn't bad the reality in design is that the players are not in a position to really understand what the options are. If polled players would all want a big slice of cake to hold and also eat, without having to give up anything required to get either.

95% of polled players would say stuff like, I want to never get infected, or I want invincible blocks, or I want laser guns.

 

[A Nice Cup of Tea]

So wait a second, are you saying that TFP has paid everyone on staff 400k a year?
That would be amazing - and possibly one of, like, 3 or 4 examples, at most, of that approach to profit sharing in not just gaming but small business in general.

Not only that but apparently they have no expenses or overhead at all. All income (not just profit, but income) is apparently just divided equally amongst all the employees.

 

[Jihh]

I would venture a guess that those who argue against having the poll are the ones who suspect that their opinion will be in the minority and then they can't keep using those prior mentioned snarky responses.

As far as I remember I never called any position the position of a vocal minority here. I'm way to seldom on this forum to have any insight on what the majority wants or what the overall tendency in this forum (which probably isn't representative) is. But I'm againt polls, since I know how bad polls as an instrument for feedback are. And even if the result of a poll would be, that everyone wants the same, it still doesn't mean that this is the best for the game.

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Not only that but apparently they have no expenses or overhead at all.

Also it seems like they don't plan for future projects which probably will cost money.

 

[hotpoon]

As far as I remember I never called any position the position of a vocal minority here. I'm way to seldom on this forum to have any insight on what the majority wants or what the overall tendency in this forum (which probably isn't representative) is. But I'm againt polls, since I know how bad polls as an instrument for feedback are. And even if the result of a poll would be, that everyone wants the same, it still doesn't mean that this is the best for the game.

I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about 2 or 3 other people who enjoy using those terms. They know who they are.

I agree that what the majority wants *might* not be good for the game, but it's still interesting to know. Like I said, the devs have no obligation to actually do what the majority of people want.

 

[Viktoriusiii]

So wait a second, are you saying that TFP has paid everyone on staff 400k a year?
That would be amazing - and possibly one of, like, 3 or 4 examples, at most, of that approach to profit sharing in not just gaming but small business in general.

dont know. never said that.

My point is that this game made so much money, that I think that you would be hard pressed to find a "normal" job with madmoles qualifications that would pay that much.

I don't want to speculate about how much money someone got. Just wanted to debunk the thesis that its all about passion and you get paid less than average, when that is clearly not the case (those 400k were on the lower side and 800k is probably more realistic, I highly doubt that any boss of a company that made so much money in such a short timespan wouldnt pay himself a great bonus. More than what EA would pay you to be a programmer for fifa for sure.)

 

[dregonazure]

This is the pimps' game, not ours. Yeah you could make more polls or ingame ones but actually making major changes based on poll data would be terrible. Yeah you can voice your concerns but I don't see any benifit to say having a pole ingame. People may ignore it or say they may have played the game in the past and now are just waiting for it to be fully released before playing it. The best an ingame pole will show is the amount of people that care enough to use said pole.

 

[meganoth]

A poll where all users come to an informed decision would have to list all negative and positive effects of a change and all players would need to understand each effect. Impossible, some of the effects are very technical.

So instead a simple poll would just ask what the players wants and as soon as TFP decides different (because they look at the whole situation and have different opinions and a different idea about how the game should be in the end) they get critizised why they did that poll if they don't listen to it anyway. Any positive effect a poll might have is overshadowed by the detriment of having to argue with players that "won" the poll.

 

[KrashYT22]

I can’t imagine any poll that would show that people think there were too many wilderness zombies. TFP didn’t reduce them in response to player wishes, they reduced them for performance reasons. Please provide your source for this premise you keep using for your point.

I use this thesis as an example. I can not find the article I read to provide you with this. I in this context is just an example of a question.

 

[Jihh]

I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about 2 or 3 other people who enjoy using those terms. They know who they are.

But you said:"I would venture a guess that those who argue against having the poll are the ones who suspect that their opinion will be in the minority and then they can't keep using those prior mentioned snarky responses."

It isn't just those 2-3 other people who argue against polls, but others too. So if you don't include others in your argument, it isn't a valid argument anymore, but just an ad hominem attack. I don't get how going ad hominem is in any way better than doing snarky comments on vocal minorities.

but it's still interesting to know

As I and others said, a poll isn't a good instrument for feedback. Limdood explained why.

What polls can do, is giving one group the feeling of being the majority and/or being right, no matter if any of those two feelings are true. So polls don't prevent snarky comments, it promotes them.

 

[KrashYT22]

Wait, you want to interrupt people while they're doing what they want in order to barrage them with questions.
What do you think of people who canvass parking lots for polls or petitions while you're trying to go somewhere? Do you like reading the EULA in games? What if you HAD to? and then answer the questions it was asking before you play?

Oh...it's not before you play? It's an optional screen/menu that people can go to, but they don't need to, they could just choose to ignore it and play the game? Then you're right back to the problem with optional polls. They only appeal to the dissatisfied who are looking for an outlet to change things. If I loved everything about the game, why would I give up time that I was looking to spend playing it to answer questions?

Also the simplicity of a question does not preclude or determine the leading nature or bias of the question.

The question you asked...Do you think that zombies are very few? (this is a yes or no question, by the way)

What do you mean? Do you mean zombies overall in the game? Zombies in POIs (which, In a17 would sometimes have like 16 zombies packed into a 1 family home)? Zombies in the wilderness? Are you asking about the horde sizes? The wandering horde sizes? Are you asking about specific biomes? Are we ignoring or counting the wasteland? What constitutes "very few?" Early game? late game? mid game? Are you asking from a gameplay standpoint? a lore standpoint? a graphics standpoint? a performance standpoint?

Your simple question is packed with dozens of places for people to assume what you mean and answer WILDLY differing questions from what you just asked.

The question was just for example. If you think a little, you can ask correctly, and maybe a lot.

Polls are not during gameplay. The menu will have a tab in the form of a game where you can check the boxes. It will be about specific subjects and so on (for example). In most games there are such polls, for example, which skin to add to the game.

 

[KrashYT22]

95% of polled players would say stuff like, I want to never get infected, or I want invincible blocks, or I want laser guns.

Again, from where such statistics. Again, this irony at random is random. According to my estimates, and staying on the forum, most players are hardcore. They do not need lightness.

I myself do not vote for ease or complexity. Immersion and balance are important to me.

 

[Roland]

I use this thesis as an example. I can not find the article I read to provide you with this. I in this context is just an example of a question.

Okay....but you are using this hypothetical example to say that TFP lied. You said that they claimed to listen to player feedback but didn't actually do so and then used this "example" as your proof that they just changed it because they wanted to but claimed it was the desire of the people. After saying THAT you can't now just claim that it was just a hypothetical example to demonstrate your point.

Doing such things is what we call libel....

The fact is, they DID go to many different sources (steam reviews, facebook and twitter comments, reddit, discord, twitch chats, steam forums) and not just these forums to read what people were saying and what their complaints were and then they made the changes that they felt could help with those complaints but not go against their own goals.

Hence, we have the changes we have but LBD and lootable zombie corpses are still nowhere to be found.

Its also why we have fewer wilderness spawns when the obvious community vote would be for there to be more wilderness spawns-- development is not poll driven.

 

[Jihh]

In most games there are such polls, for example, which skin to add to the game.

That's the kind of polls you actually can do. But it this the kind of feedback TFP needs right now? Shouldn't they go beta or even gold, before caring for some cosmetic extras?

 

[KrashYT22]

I noticed that many took the concept of voting, polls too seriously. And so on.

The thesis was that this would allow monitoring the opinion in numbers. Figures could be compared with written opinions, and those who would like to draw conclusions. No one is obliging, not hinting, not forcing, not not not. Developers follow, subordinate, and so on, according to the results of the voting. Exactly the same as in the comments of the forum.

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Okay....but you are using this hypothetical example to say that TFP lied. You said that they claimed to listen to player feedback but didn't actually do so and then used this "example" as your proof that they just changed it because they wanted to but claimed it was the desire of the people. After saying THAT you can't now just claim that it was just a hypothetical example to demonstrate your point.
Doing such things is what we call libel....

The fact is, they DID go to many different sources (steam reviews, facebook and twitter comments, reddit, discord, twitch chats, steam forums) and not just these forums to read what people were saying and what their complaints were and then they made the changes that they felt could help with those complaints but not go against their own goals.

Hence, we have the changes we have but LBD and lootable zombie corpses are still nowhere to be found.

Its also why we have fewer wilderness spawns when the obvious community vote would be for there to be more wilderness spawns-- development is not poll driven.

I read this in a patch note article. But I can not find the section in which these comments were used, which I gave as an example. I went into the notes patch last, but for some reason there is 3 times less information than there. Most likely this is not the one. And I can’t find the right one.

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That's the kind of polls you actually can do. But it this the kind of feedback TFP needs right now? Shouldn't they go beta or even gold, before caring for some cosmetic extras?

Oh god You can read the word written in my sentence: "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" EXAMPLE "" "" "" "" "" ""

 

[KrashYT22]

Okay....but you are using this hypothetical example to say that TFP lied. You said that they claimed to listen to player feedback but didn't actually do so and then used this "example" as your proof that they just changed it because they wanted to but claimed it was the desire of the people. After saying THAT you can't now just claim that it was just a hypothetical example to demonstrate your point.
Doing such things is what we call libel....

The fact is, they DID go to many different sources (steam reviews, facebook and twitter comments, reddit, discord, twitch chats, steam forums) and not just these forums to read what people were saying and what their complaints were and then they made the changes that they felt could help with those complaints but not go against their own goals.

Hence, we have the changes we have but LBD and lootable zombie corpses are still nowhere to be found.

Its also why we have fewer wilderness spawns when the obvious community vote would be for there to be more wilderness spawns-- development is not poll driven.

'' We also lowered biome spawning some so players could have a little more breathing room when just exploring the world. ''

Here is the line from the patch note. Which says it’s easier for players to explore the world. But not in relation to performance. And at the top of the patch, the note says that the changes were based on the feedback from the forums, and the opinion of the developers. That's it in general.

 

[Brian9824]

Again, from where such statistics. Again, this irony at random is random. According to my estimates, and staying on the forum, most players are hardcore. They do not need lightness.

I myself do not vote for ease or complexity. Immersion and balance are important to me.

You clearly do not actually visit the steam forums and see all the complaints about people who find the game too hard, or the numerous requests for mods to reduce zombies damage to 0 for instance, or people wanting to be able to craft invincible bases, etc.