Official polls

[Mharc]

It's been over 2 months since the last official poll. Surely there are issues you guys at Funcom would like to poll the playerbase about. Keep in touch with us, get polling!

[__________Wraith God]

Hehe. Sorry, but polls are probably the most useless vehicle for feedback. Not only are selections ridiculously restricted, but no rationale can be given. Polls are tools of progagandists and people looking for support for their own pet project.

[Mharc]

I'm not talking about player created polls, I'm talking about the official polls by FC. I'd hardly call their polls rediculously restricted and propagandist...

[__________Wraith God]

One of the last offical Funcom poll with results:

'How do you rate the 14.5 patch?'

Wonderful! 52 4.01%
Great! 137 10.57%
Good 211 16.28%
Nice 124 9.57%
Ok 219 16.90%
Not bad 135 10.42%
Bad 268 20.68%
Horrible! 67 5.17%
Atrocious! 83 6.40%
Total: 1296 votes 100%

As a developer, What are you going to do with this information?

You have no idea why people voted this way. You have no idea what people liked, and what they didn't like. How can you respond to this? That is, how can you do anything concrete to address what people didn't like, or how can you keep doing what people did like. Most importantly, should you change what people didn't like or keep doing what they did? You can't answer that because you don't know how well people understood the things you did. Maybe the issue is to improve the communication rather than change the development approach.

There are just so many unknowns here, that this information cannot be used in an informed way. I'm sure some management type could take this info and some decision on it, but is a crap shoot, and has nothing to do with science.

[Mharc]

I'm not saying that the polls are a good tool for pinpointing exactly what's wrong and what's right with a patch (to continue with your example). Those things will show up in the forums. But they are a far better tool to measure the general feeling about a subject.

If you read the forum, you'd sometimes think there's nothing good about this game at all. The problems are addressed by a very vocal part of the population, whereas the things that are good are either not addressed or overshadowed by the sheer volume of complaint posts.

I think polls can offer a more balanced insight into the entire playerbase's general feelings about certain subjects than the boards. And I for one like seeing the results.

Poll: Do you agree with me?

Yes
No

[__________Wraith God]

Yes and no.

I sure agree that if all you did was read these Forums, you'd shut the game down as totally unplayble and totally beyond repair. I for one think that would be a big misunderstanding. And I also agree that the Forums are used by a special segment of the population, and that people are most likely to report their problems here rather than the things they like and the things that keep them coming back.

I also agree that you want a balanced understanding of your playerbase's general feelings about the game, and the various aspects of it. Last, I also like to see what the playerbase thinks of various things.

However, in my opinion polls are not the vehicle to give you what you want. Further, Funcom already has the best tap into people's general feelings of the game, and that is the subscription information.

I admit, though, that polls are not totally useless. If you're looking for an instantaneous public sentiment thermometer, then they may work for you. The point is that is all they are, so Funcom cannot (sensibly) use the information to change anything they do. Which means, they're a kind of PR tool.

Myself, I'm interested in tools that give you information that you can use to understand what's going on, and therefore can be used to change what you do. This is what I'd like to see Funcom using, because it would indicate that they're operating in some sort of scientific manner.

In short then, polls are for fun. And that's just fine. But I get the impression from some of these polls, that somebody in Funcom thinks that by running them they're gaining information that they can use to change what they do. And that's totally dumb.

[Kissysuzuki]

Originally posted by Wraith God
Yes and no.

I sure agree that if all you did was read these Forums, you'd shut the game down as totally unplayble and totally beyond repair.

Your just hanging out in the wrong bits mate. Try the Enforcer forum they are all (well mostly) well balanced happy individuals. happy to compare and make adjustments as suggested.

Oh! and btw on the idea of offical polls.

I don't believe they reall tell FC anything they don't already know or suspect but what FC should realise that they DO do is allow their customer base to feel that they are providing usefull feed back.