Is this the way SoE and EQ2 is to be perceived? Moor/Black?

[Goldenpaw]

I’d like to pose a serious question to you guys over at SoE working this game, this isn’t meant to be flame bait or to incite anger, just a serious question to you.

Background:

I am an IT guy, I work servers / backend, and anything that encompasses our network.  3 years ago, we decided to do a ROI on Cisco IP Phones for our agency.  We had our numbers, it showed that by doing away with our current phones, we would get out of various contracts, save us an incredible amount of money in long distance charges between sites, and make all maintenance of phones go to IT instead of contracted out.

It was approved, we had our purchasing plan in order, ready to buy them, and then when we go to make the purchase our CFO stopped it.

The reason? Well we were about layoff people, and they didn’t think the image presented of having brand new Cisco 7940 phones on a desk, while we told them their jobs were gone was a very good thing.

I was upset because you know what I wanted was the bottom line, to save our company money, looks be damned.  But what happened is that it opened my eyes to the fact that perception is such a vital thing.

The Question:

With the background of what I said, why are you guys doing what you are doing in the way you are moving EQ2?

Complaint:

There are no new armor models for PC…

So why are your artists working on this? There are new UI pieces coming out.

While you see there maybe absolutely no correlation between your UI designers and your armor artists, what the end user (us) sees is that your artists are busy working on something that doesn’t matter to us.

Complaint:

Classes are being able to solo heroics, Guardians can’t hold hate, Healers whacked in the face with a nerf bat lined with lead, promises never delivered…

So why are you adding in some new gambling goblin?

There is no -logical- correlation between these two, and yet still, still I say people are asking why are you wasting resources on this when things in the game are broken?

…

You see we do not know the how’s when’s and why’s to what you guys do, or when you do it.  We have to take the very rare information you do give us and then we speculate as to why you aren’t taking a serious look at things that we feel are seriously broken.

The way we perceive the way you look at us, is a bunch of end users who do not deserve the time of day.

On that note, personally I started emailing all users (at my work) these weekly update notes on what their IT Department was doing for them.  I had an overwhelming response by our people of, “Thank You, it is nice to see that you guys are working for us.”  Now I ask you, did I, working purely in the backend, need to do this? Nope. I wasn’t even asked to.  But what I did was take how in the dark you keep us, and reverse it and have made people very happy at our company.

Sure they don’t understand we are doing extensive testing on our new servers to make a judgment call on whether to keep the SAN or replace it with local drives, with raid controllers running 0+1.  But you know what they do see? We are working for them…

My final thought is that so much is based upon perception of what we see you doing, because of the absolute darkness you keep on what is being done with issues important to us.

While your GimpyGamblingGoblin maybe the neatest thing since sliced bread, what we -see- is that fact that you are wasting time developing something none of us really wanted…

Maybe it would have been a better idea to have stayed very quiet about your gambling goblin until say 3 months after this very extensive combat change, or at least until you actually answered the people begging for answers about their class “balance”.  I'm not saying it took any more than 15 minutes of resources to do the gambling goblin, but what it LOOKS LIKE is that you diverted resources to do this (EVEN PATCH IT) BEFORE you FIXED things wrong.  Don't release Gimpy when other large issues loom!!!

And while there is something to be said about innovative features, there is something a lot more to be said about a gaming company that we fund with our working dollars listening, caring and informing us about the issues we feel are vital.

Why not start polling us to find out what we think is vital?  You’ve asked us questions per account in game before, why not do it once a Friday with an opt out option?

Are you trying to retain your playerbase? Or increase it?

I do not think a gambling goblin is going to do either one of those.  Maybe, I don’t know those boat things you talked about before the game was released? Or maybe flying around on those $40US dragons we paid for in the collectors edition that were supposed to grow (or maybe I’m just imagining you said that in your posts Moor).

Thanks for your time

[Vicio]

 Pardon me, but SOE certainly appears to be a very western company with a serious disconnect on how to properly run an MMOPRG. I'm going to guess any exploits or unintended code can be taken out with little oversight but to have them reinstated would take managment a week to figure out what do to, a month on a list of things to do, and another week for programmers to fix what took only a moment to "nerf".

 

Is this the case? It certainly appears so. Okay, /rant off

[Ay]

I like the idea of the weekly question thing. But I think they won't do it because they believe SoE knows what the playerbase wants more than the playerbase does.

I'm not sure if they are right about that or not. Probably not. But i do know that an overall change-in-everything patch usually doesnt go over well with a community because people pick classes and stick with them to 50 because they KNOW they like the class and if you drastically change all after that you've basically pulled the rug out beneath your customer. SoE wanted to make the game harder, etc, etc, maybe for good reasons, but trying to turn one game into a whole other game mid way through it's life cycle is a dangerous game.

As far as divying out their resources goes, why would they care much about fixing code you've already bought? They are hard at work, working on new broken code that you can buy in the next expansion as we speak

Anyway, it's all been said before.

 

[beylanu]

Well I don't agree with the specific complaints(partially agree with the armor looks, not the other complaint about guardians/healers), I do agree with the general principle. SOE, I bought your game to explore, fight, and somehow grow in levels.  That is my idea of fun.  When in stormhold, pulling a mob and doing the reposition dance so that I can actually see the mob to kill it, I don't think "well gee, that gambling goblin is soOo much fun!"  I've heard all the arguments by the fanbois before.  Different teams work on these things.  But in my mind, it goes like this.  You have X dollars appropriated to development.  Some goes into future development.  Some goes into bug fixes.  If bugs that are important to me don't get fixed, but new "features" that don't mean jack to me keep getting implemented, then I think you need to re-appropriate your development dollars. I didn't buy EQ2 to go to a goblin and hit the "gamble" button.  I admit that there is a percentage of the population that find this amusing and will be drawn to this.  I realize this game isn't all about me.  However, I write this to let you know of what is important to this customer.  Fix what you originally sold to me.  An adventuring game.  Not online gambling. Thanks. oh, IBTL since it's directed at the devs/mods.

[Silverpaws]

Thank you for this post, Golden.  Perception is everything, not only in a game, but like you stated, in any business.  I am an nurse in an ER.  And helping people in the worst of times, sometimes changing their perception of what is going on can change the ultimate outcome. People have screamed for armor changes (colors).  They want the mitigation problems fixed so "old eq2" (if there is such a thing only 11 months into a game) can be fought again with the same level characters as before. Again, I applaude Golden.  We perceive you are working on gambling, not armor dyes or the ability to change your looks.  Being that you may have 5-10 groups working on 100s of different game parts, you may very well be working on exactly what we are requesting.  But we dont see it.  You dont talk about, therefore, to the average person...its not being done.  Artists probably dont work on content, designers probably dont write quests.  But many players just see "you guys" and think that "you guys" arent listening. Maybe have your staff send a summary of changes they are working on to the Community Relations dept, and then give us a "Things to come" post once a month so your customers know you hear them. Thanks for the post Golden.

Message Edited by Silverpaws on 10-03-2005 11:10 AM

[lisasdarr]

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Ayun wrote:

I like the idea of the weekly question thing. But I think they won't do it because they believe SoE knows what the playerbase wants more than the playerbase does.

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Of course the problem with this point is that what most people mean by "You are not doing what the players want" is actually "You are not doing what I want" There are quite a lot of people who play this game, they all have differenct perspectives of what is good and bad, on these boards is a small sub-section of the players and in any thread here you will see a dozen different opinions in the first dozen posts (Well not quite, but you get the idea). So what do the player base want?

• Some want different armor appearances, some don't care.
• Some think combat is too hard, some think it is too easy.
• Some think Paladins suck now, others think they are great.
• Some people believe their character is borked, others think their character of the same class is fantastic.
• Some people are able to see past baseless perception, others are to blind to do so.

They can't base the direction of the game on what people want, they need to find a middle ground that doesn't upset too many people and that makes enough others happy, that is a very tricky proposition.

[vochore]

i persanoly think the the gambling goblin is nothing more then some slick programer or exec that said"we need something to divert there attention away from all the problems we are haveing with the game...lets drop a gambling npc into the game and that will take there minds off of it for a while and get them off our backs,if they loose intreast to fast throw in a bug that gives out 10 times the loot for a short time and every 1 and there mother will be spending time trying it out" and it will prob. work.

[StonyStratford]

Interesting read, Goldenpaw. I agree that perception is important according to the end user. I think there is also an argument to imply that it's just a cuddly thing, and that SoE do already produce monthly letters etc to remind us what they have done.

 

As for the gambling. They had the same thing in EQ1 - just another way to remove money from the game. Astonishing for most of us, but some have more money than they know what to do with

[Vicio]

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lisasdarren wrote:

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Ayun wrote:

I like the idea of the weekly question thing. But I think they won't do it because they believe SoE knows what the playerbase wants more than the playerbase does.

---

Of course the problem with this point is that what most people mean by "You are not doing what the players want" is actually "You are not doing what I want"

There are quite a lot of people who play this game, they all have differenct perspectives of what is good and bad, on these boards is a small sub-section of the players and in any thread here you will see a dozen different opinions in the first dozen posts (Well not quite, but you get the idea).

So what do the player base want?

• Some want different armor appearances, some don't care.
• Some think combat is too hard, some think it is too easy.
• Some think Paladins suck now, others think they are great.
• Some people believe their character is borked, others think their character of the same class is fantastic.
• Some people are able to see past baseless perception, others are to blind to do so.

They can't base the direction of the game on what people want, they need to find a middle ground that doesn't upset too many people and that makes enough others happy, that is a very tricky proposition.

---

 

 

Of course, SOE could make a poll and find out which would be a nice start.

[Ay]

Of course by the "player base" i meant the majority. I thought it was implied though.

 

[Naxious]

Golden has definetly made some good points I am in support of a weekly poll idea, this would be a great way to get customer response and possibly direct SOE towards a better stance then where EQ2 is heading right now.

I also strongly believe that the gfx for the new armor needs to be changed even just a slight change in hue would be a step in the right direction.

There is unquestionably a smaller player base now more so then ever and if they intend on keeping or expanding it the bottom line is that there needs to be more player interaction / guidance as far as development goes and not stop implementing this useless shiza that has no viable reason to be in the game.

Realisticly changes don't happen in just one day but if something doesnt start to happen I won't be suprised to see EQ2 crash and burn.

 

 

[Aszuth]

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Vicious wrote:

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lisasdarren wrote:

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Ayun wrote:

I like the idea of the weekly question thing. But I think they won't do it because they believe SoE knows what the playerbase wants more than the playerbase does.

---

Of course the problem with this point is that what most people mean by "You are not doing what the players want" is actually "You are not doing what I want"

There are quite a lot of people who play this game, they all have differenct perspectives of what is good and bad, on these boards is a small sub-section of the players and in any thread here you will see a dozen different opinions in the first dozen posts (Well not quite, but you get the idea).

So what do the player base want?

• Some want different armor appearances, some don't care.
• Some think combat is too hard, some think it is too easy.
• Some think Paladins suck now, others think they are great.
• Some people believe their character is borked, others think their character of the same class is fantastic.
• Some people are able to see past baseless perception, others are to blind to do so.

They can't base the direction of the game on what people want, they need to find a middle ground that doesn't upset too many people and that makes enough others happy, that is a very tricky proposition.

---

 

 

Of course, SOE could make a poll and find out which would be a nice start.

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Voluntary polls are notoriously innaccurate, and there's no way to make it mandatory barring a click-through at login which would have alot of people clicking a random option to bypass it quickly anyhow - research stuff before spewing nonsense like that.

[neria]

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Aszuthan wrote:

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Vicious wrote:

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lisasdarren wrote:

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Ayun wrote:

I like the idea of the weekly question thing. But I think they won't do it because they believe SoE knows what the playerbase wants more than the playerbase does.

---

Of course the problem with this point is that what most people mean by "You are not doing what the players want" is actually "You are not doing what I want"

There are quite a lot of people who play this game, they all have differenct perspectives of what is good and bad, on these boards is a small sub-section of the players and in any thread here you will see a dozen different opinions in the first dozen posts (Well not quite, but you get the idea).

So what do the player base want?

• Some want different armor appearances, some don't care.
• Some think combat is too hard, some think it is too easy.
• Some think Paladins suck now, others think they are great.
• Some people believe their character is borked, others think their character of the same class is fantastic.
• Some people are able to see past baseless perception, others are to blind to do so.

They can't base the direction of the game on what people want, they need to find a middle ground that doesn't upset too many people and that makes enough others happy, that is a very tricky proposition.

---

 

 

Of course, SOE could make a poll and find out which would be a nice start.

---

Voluntary polls are notoriously innaccurate, and there's no way to make it mandatory barring a click-through at login which would have alot of people clicking a random option to bypass it quickly anyhow - research stuff before spewing nonsense like that.

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Whereas merely guessing what their player base wants always leads to the best results, of course, since SOE is psychic and can do no wrong. They always know what we will like better than we do.

 

Funny that so many businesses and other organizations conduct voluntary polls if they're so useless. I guess you know more than all of them do.

[andersonim]

Golden, grats! on a very well written post. one of the most balanced and logical onesi've seen in a while.

Reply 11 of 13

Viewed 134 times

Golden has definetly made some good points I am in support of a weekly poll idea, this would be a great way to get customer response and possibly direct SOE towards a better stance then where EQ2 is heading right now.

Naxious wrote:

[I also strongly believe that the gfx for the new armor needs to be changed even just a slight change in hue would be a step in the right direction.

There is unquestionably a smaller player base now more so then ever and if they intend on keeping or expanding it the bottom line is that there needs to be more player interaction / guidance as far as development goes and not stop implementing this useless shiza that has no viable reason to be in the game.

Realisticly changes don't happen in just one day but if something doesnt start to happen I won't be suprised to see EQ2 crash and burn.]

About player base, i know for a fact it is dwindling, i know of 3 whole guilds of 50ish players that have dissapered over night on my server, this is terrible, with that said though; my guild has picked up a few very good players because of this. however this is not a very good long term trend. and i hope SOE starts doing polls or something, so they can really listen to the player base, like they say they do.

Message Edited by andersonim on 10-03-2005 01:37 PM

[Voq]

New armor models would be nice but it's not that big of a deal.  (this is an opinion matter, not a game breaker)

 

I think the combat changes are for the better and so sorry if you can no longer wtfpwn everything in sight in easy mode.  Get over it.  (this is an opinion matter, not a game breaker, but it's a serious and real issue since many players got used to demolishing group content and vastly higher mobs under the previously poorly designed system).

 

I do agree that the whole gambling goblin thing is silly but as a programmer/developer I would certainly hope that something this flimsy didn't take more than a few hours to fully implement and test.  We're talking miniscule feature.  So hopefully real issues are being addressed and not mentioned since they're not as sexy.

 

It does irk me that they are working on something that no serious player cares about (in-game gambling) while there are truly disasterous issues like mobs in walls/ceilings/floors /ground that often make dungeon combat pure misery (and it affects any environment, even outdoors).

 

It irks me that I take out all the mobs around a den (like gnoll tents, for ex) and sometimes chests or other similar things appear that do nothing - and I'm told it's a long standing known issue.

 

It bothers me that things are that truly broken and not working (and outside the realm of opinion) are not being fixed yet fluff is being added.

 

I question why UI elements are being redesigned in appearance when they work just fine and there are glaring broken pieces to the game.

 

[Ildarus]

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Aszuthan wrote:

---

Vicious wrote:

---

lisasdarren wrote:

---

Ayun wrote:

I like the idea of the weekly question thing. But I think they won't do it because they believe SoE knows what the playerbase wants more than the playerbase does.

---

Of course the problem with this point is that what most people mean by "You are not doing what the players want" is actually "You are not doing what I want"

There are quite a lot of people who play this game, they all have differenct perspectives of what is good and bad, on these boards is a small sub-section of the players and in any thread here you will see a dozen different opinions in the first dozen posts (Well not quite, but you get the idea).

So what do the player base want?

• Some want different armor appearances, some don't care.
• Some think combat is too hard, some think it is too easy.
• Some think Paladins suck now, others think they are great.
• Some people believe their character is borked, others think their character of the same class is fantastic.
• Some people are able to see past baseless perception, others are to blind to do so.

They can't base the direction of the game on what people want, they need to find a middle ground that doesn't upset too many people and that makes enough others happy, that is a very tricky proposition.

---

 

 

Of course, SOE could make a poll and find out which would be a nice start.

---

Voluntary polls are notoriously innaccurate, and there's no way to make it mandatory barring a click-through at login which would have alot of people clicking a random option to bypass it quickly anyhow - research stuff before spewing nonsense like that.

---

Ok, so these forums and Sony thinking for us is accurate. NOT!!!!!!! These forums are a very small percentage of the player base and to say the voluntary polls are notoriously innaccurate is false. The company I work for does anonymous voluntary polls of its employees all the time and they seem to, most of the time, net the results that the employees indicated. Lots of companies do them and guess what politicians sometimes make major decisions based on voluntary polls.

 

I suggested this a few weeks back. You know why I suggested it? Because I happened to be checking out the Vangaurd website and what is the first thing I saw, the devs polling the player community asking what potential players would like to see. That is a good customer relations department. They are trying to get feed back before the game even goes live. Sony has done polls before from the launch pad. Do it again. Yes some people may bypass it, but based on statistics they will get an accurate picture of what the player base wants because it will be a cross section of all the types of players they have.

 

I totally agree with the OP. What is the deal? They need to some fixes done before adding more new and I don't want to hear about seperate departments doing different things because if that is the case they need to move some people from new content to the fixes department.

 

I also agree communication is key and I think Moorgard or Blackgaurd or someone could ver easily put out an update letter each week explaining to the community what they are working on. Not a fluff letter, but the down and dirty.

Message Edited by Ildarus on 10-03-2005 02:20 PM

[Aszuth]

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neriana wrote:

 

Whereas merely guessing what their player base wants always leads to the best results, of course, since SOE is psychic and can do no wrong. They always know what we will like better than we do.

 

Funny that so many businesses and other organizations conduct voluntary polls if they're so useless. I guess you know more than all of them do.

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Just goes to show you're unaware of what types of polling there are.

Phone polling, the most common practice that business and other organizations use, is a VERY valid (in fact the most valid form I'm aware of) to poll - and barring it's cosmetic similarity to online polls, it's dramatically different. I have family that does phone polling as a profession, it's a rather consistent topic at holiday's and such.

For starters there is no "ignore/random answer" option. If you see a poll on a website you can say "Eh, I don't care" and go about your business, and for a mandatory one you have the option to just hit a random response, poll sources considered incredibly valid have said there's a disparity of in excess of 15% for online polls primarily for that reason (MSN.com puts a disclaimer for that exact reason - and other groups have posted similar reasoning as to why they don't) - if someone is actually asking you verbally on the phone, less than 2% will respond with an inappropriate/random answer and those that aren't interested will explicitly state such and be marked appropriately.

For anything more verbose I'd have to grab them and brush up on the specifics, but in short - any type of polling on the internet is inherently voluntary, and therefor flawed.

[Aszuth]

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Ildarus wrote:

Ok, so these forums and Sony thinking for us is accurate. NOT!!!!!!! These forums are a very small percentage of the player base and to say the voluntary polls are notoriously innaccurate is false. The company I work for does anonymous voluntary polls of its employees all the time and they seem to, most of the time, net the results that the employees indicated. Lots of companies do them and guess what politicians sometimes make major decisions based on voluntary polls.

Message Edited by Ildarus on 10-03-2005 02:20 PM

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For one thing, I never stated these forums were a good basis - quite the contrary - for much the same reasons that voluntary polling doesn't work, there's random crap and lack of interest by many of the people that don't participate.

As for anonymous "voluntary" polls at a place of work - most people would consider participating in it beneficial for advancement, etc - hardly "voluntary" by any normal means - not to mention having a true "opt out" option is what defines something as voluntary.

To those that don't understand pollster speak a voluntary poll means the following are done:

1. That the persons taking the poll are DO NOT selected at random amongst the appropriate "group" to be polled. (Internet polls don't do this, as a result you can sometimes get some getting multiple votes, while some getting none - or the entire link to the poll is missed by many that may have been interested in voting on the poll topic - or due to disinterest having random clickthroughs without even reading)

2. That there is NOT a true "opt out" option NOR a method of human review after the fact that opt outs are factored appropriately.

Political polls are handled like this by any group that claims a +/-2% accuracy as well as any other polling that is considered accurate.

[Cowdenic]

And they could not add in an option to skip the poll? You cannot seem so intelligent and be so stupid at the same time could you?

[Cowdenic]

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Aszuthan wrote:

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Ildarus wrote:

Ok, so these forums and Sony thinking for us is accurate. NOT!!!!!!! These forums are a very small percentage of the player base and to say the voluntary polls are notoriously innaccurate is false. The company I work for does anonymous voluntary polls of its employees all the time and they seem to, most of the time, net the results that the employees indicated. Lots of companies do them and guess what politicians sometimes make major decisions based on voluntary polls.

Message Edited by Ildarus on 10-03-2005 02:20 PM

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For one thing, I never stated these forums were a good basis - quite the contrary - for much the same reasons that voluntary polling doesn't work, there's random crap and lack of interest by many of the people that don't participate.

As for anonymous "voluntary" polls at a place of work - most people would consider participating in it beneficial for advancement, etc - hardly "voluntary" by any normal means - not to mention having a true "opt out" option is what defines something as voluntary.

To those that don't understand pollster speak a voluntary poll means the following are done:

1. That the persons taking the poll are DO NOT selected at random amongst the appropriate "group" to be polled. (Internet polls don't do this, as a result you can sometimes get some getting multiple votes, while some getting none - or the entire link to the poll is missed by many that may have been interested in voting on the poll topic - or due to disinterest having random clickthroughs without even reading)

2. That there is NOT a true "opt out" option NOR a method of human review after the fact that opt outs are factored appropriately.

Political polls are handled like this by any group that claims a +/-2% accuracy as well as any other polling that is considered accurate.

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A few points oh wondourous one. LOL. If it is an anonymous poll at work oh my liberal friend how could it be beneficial to advancement since NOBODY KNOWS YOU DID IT (hence anonymous). These polls could be made voluntary when you log in and given an opt out if you are not intrested. Hence there is not a "RANDOM" Factor but EVERYBODY IS POLLED. See no messy links, or any of that, no somebody polled twice (unless they have 2 accounts). Human review is so not necessary.  The only thing human review allows is pollsters to spin and edit. You see if 300,000 surveys are given out then SoE can be given 300k rezsoponses even if the response is no response which is a valid response.

 

I worked for Gallop, I know what I am talking about.

[Find]

Yo, gold.  Top marks for a well laid-out post. I'm gonna get back to the original topic here, one of perception.  First thing that popped into my head while reading the OP was, "wow, he's right, Sony's become very tight-lipped."  I dunno how many of you remember, but back before the game was released Moorgard was the Community Guy.  He didn't keep himself at arm's length like the current set of SOE representatives, he gave out as much information as he could, and hinted at stuff he couldn't disclose.  I'm fairly convinced, at this juncture, that nobody could have danced around issues or picked just the right words as to not sound stand-offish, or like a secret-monger, as well as he.  MG is probably one of the best reasons I can give as for why I quit another MMORPG a week after hitting the level cap to come play EQ2. Now, I'm not saying that Moorgard is a god among men.  I wonder just how much stuff is being labelled as Top Secret behind the doors of SOE; I wonder if perhaps MG was able to say more than say, Blackguard.  The problem here is, you usually keep secrets BEFORE a major product is released.  Afterwards, there's very few reasons to keep secrets from your customer base.  Dev journals should be displayed fairly prominently now!  They don't need source code, they don't need to be updated every day, but at least show us what you guys are working on!  Show us that you've taken our ideas and comments and whining and for the love of god /feedbacks into consideration.  I'm pretty sure THAT's the kind of perception Gold was talkin' about. Show us that you are PEOPLE, Sony, not just a faceless bureaucracy of tired programmers and out-of-touch designers.  (And uh, non-existent armor & weapon model artists.) Ask Moorgard how. Ja. -pasht ah, p.s. - Cow, don't wanna call anyone a liar, but uh... it's Gallup. [edit - uh, forgot a couple words ]

Message Edited by Findel on 10-03-2005 05:56 PM

[Aszuth]

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Cowdenicus wrote:

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Aszuthan wrote:

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Ildarus wrote:

Ok, so these forums and Sony thinking for us is accurate. NOT!!!!!!! These forums are a very small percentage of the player base and to say the voluntary polls are notoriously innaccurate is false. The company I work for does anonymous voluntary polls of its employees all the time and they seem to, most of the time, net the results that the employees indicated. Lots of companies do them and guess what politicians sometimes make major decisions based on voluntary polls.

Message Edited by Ildarus on 10-03-200502:20 PM

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For one thing, I never stated these forums were a good basis - quite the contrary - for much the same reasons that voluntary polling doesn't work, there's random crap and lack of interest by many of the people that don't participate.

As for anonymous "voluntary" polls at a place of work - most people would consider participating in it beneficial for advancement, etc - hardly "voluntary" by any normal means - not to mention having a true "opt out" option is what defines something as voluntary.

To those that don't understand pollster speak a voluntary poll means the following are done:

1. That the persons taking the poll are DO NOT selected at random amongst the appropriate "group" to be polled. (Internet polls don't do this, as a result you can sometimes get some getting multiple votes, while some getting none - or the entire link to the poll is missed by many that may have been interested in voting on the poll topic - or due to disinterest having random clickthroughs without even reading)

2. That there is NOT a true "opt out" option NOR a method of human review after the fact that opt outs are factored appropriately.

Political polls are handled like this by any group that claims a +/-2% accuracy as well as any other polling that is considered accurate.

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A few points oh wondourous one. LOL. If it is an anonymous poll at work oh my liberal friend how could it be beneficial to advancement since NOBODY KNOWS YOU DID IT (hence anonymous). These polls could be made voluntary when you log in and given an opt out if you are not intrested. Hence there is not a "RANDOM" Factor but EVERYBODY IS POLLED. See no messy links, or any of that, no somebody polled twice (unless they have 2 accounts). Human review is so not necessary.  The only thing human review allows is pollsters to spin and edit. You see if 300,000 surveys are given out then SoE can be given 300k rezsoponses even if the response is no response which is a valid response.

 

I worked for Gallop, I know what I am talking about.

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Really? If so give them a call and say "Hello" to Elise Atlas for me, I'm sure she'll pass the message along to me. Didn't feel like identifying her workplace earlier, but since you dragged it into the thread (likely as bull[expletive ninja'd by Faarbot]), why not. She did polling for Wall Street Times before that.

Also far from liberal, but hey - it wouldn't be fun if I couldn't punch holes in every point of bull[expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] you tried to make.

If you ever actually worked at Gallup, you'd have likely spoken to someone who expressed similar feelings about internet pollings in the upper echelons of your staff, since they're the ones that first condemned the accuracy of online polling and continue to quite often - in fact on many networks you saw some of their top brass explaining why the online polls were flawed, for exactly the types of reasons I listed.

[Aszuth]

Quick little addition - don't get me wrong, a round-table of getting ideas out and regular back-and-forth discussion is a good one, but polling's far from an accurate method of getting a result like that. (nor particularly effective since response choices are "canned")

 

Something like a topic brought up (preferably wide ones) weekly and discussed for a week on the forums with regular dev involvement (more than just BG/MG and the other "board" devs) that they can use as a blueprint after seeing people's pros and cons towards things to apply towards future patches/LUs - heck, to encourage more involvement they could even add a "current development topic" blurb with a link to the patcher.

 

[Daish]

Bottom line, if SOE actually wanted to, or understood how important, communicating with it's player base (customers), they would be doing a much better job.  (anything is better than where they are at)

In the most simple terms, SOE why dont you just give us a breakdown of what your longterm plans are, and what is currently being tested, developed, designed?  If the dumb gambling thing was just a small project among many other higher priority projects, then that would be good information to give.

If you were not actually going to be done with the combat revamp or DoF content at launch...  they you woulda saved some frustrated customer's time by letting us know that.  (not to mention, you shoulda just waited till it was done, but that is another rant)

In the end, it is less about what this player or that player wants, it is about the fact that SOE apparently does not think that communicating with it's customers is worthwhile, or they would do it.

(shameless plug here, but checkout www.eve-online.com , left hand nav bar, patches, and look at 'in testing', 'in development', 'ideas' for an example of what a decent level of communication looks like)

[Prieston]

Cowdenicus, if you ever really worked for Gallup, you probably would know how to spell it. Don't lie please.

A weekly poll could possibly work, but they would have to implement it differently than on a website and they would have to lock it so a particular account could only answer it once a week. Many polls that float around ARE inaccurate because they don't do a good job of getting a crosssection of the population they are trying to poll. Having a poll set up on the boards would be worthless, because only a small percentage of the population (mostly people who are more hardcore) actually post here or even read the boards. Also, it would be unwise to display any sort of poll results to the playerbase because it would just cause more complaints when something doesn't get done that the poll expressed as important. This is because, despite the huge inaccuracies of many polls, people still take the results as gospel (hence the contention amongst those saying polls are an accurate way of monitoring what the playerbasewants and a good idea). It is difficult to set up an accurate poll, and I bet most people would still not be satisfied if they were polled but the results weren't displayed to them despite the fact that the poll should be a tool for the devs and not weapon for complaining gamers to use when they don't get their way.

[FreaklyCreak]

1. I think LU#13 works really well. Only thing that is extreamly hard is raids now. I have yet to see anyone solo heroics outside of harclave since the patch. Groups are working how they should take a LONG time to look over what the classes do now apprently you know nothing of this game. Classes now do defined tasks and have excellent roles and great skills. I find that now making combo, using Heroic ops, and working together a much more important thing as it should be!

2. ....Are you really complaining about the UI not looking good with the armor....go download a new UI...

3. i forgot what else you said and im growing angry so LAY OFF SoE THEY ARE FINALLY LISTENING TO US AND MAKING GOOD CHANGES

 

=) have a nice day dont let the website give you 50 viruses and tons of spyware on your way out

[Landiin]

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FreaklyCreak wrote:

1. I think LU#13 works really well. Only thing that is extreamly hard is raids now. I have yet to see anyone solo heroics outside of harclave since the patch. Groups are working how they should take a LONG time to look over what the classes do now apprently you know nothing of this game. Classes now do defined tasks and have excellent roles and great skills. I find that now making combo, using Heroic ops, and working together a much more important thing as it should be!

2. ....Are you really complaining about the UI not looking good with the armor....go download a new UI...

3. i forgot what else you said and im growing angry so LAY OFF SoE THEY ARE FINALLY LISTENING TO US AND MAKING GOOD CHANGES

=) have a nice day dont let the website give you 50 viruses and tons of spyware on your way out

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Do you play the same game we do?

[Telcontari71]

Having carefully read the thread,  I must agree that perception is the key.   The developers seem to be a bit out of touch with the common player.  The seem to listen to a few very verbose groups.

 

I did not buy EQ to play bingo.  I certainly did not buy EQ to

[Telcontari71]

Having carefully read the thread,  I must agree that perception is the key.   The developers seem to be a bit out of touch with the common player.  The seem to listen to a few very verbose groups.

 

I did not buy EQ to play bingo.  I certainly did not buy EQ to train

[lisasdarr]

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Ayun wrote:

Of course by the "player base" i meant the majority. I thought it was implied though.

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For the same reasons I stated in my original post this still doesn't work, there is no clear majority on many of the issues and game design decisions. If 55% want something one way and 45% want it another then the fairest and most sensible option is to find a medium balance, not go with the majority. Generally though the Devs are aware that they need to find a balance between giving the players what they want and doing what is necessary to make the game a long term challenge and make it remain interesting. What players want is generally emotive and is therefore unreliable by default; for example non-dps classes are complaining that the DPS classes can level far faster than them because they kill mobs very fast, where as the Devs know (they have data on everything that happens in game remember) that there is only a very slight advantage for DPS classes in terms of leveling speed. In essence, there are lots of people play this game and no two of them want exactly the same things, most issues have fairly opposed fewpoints, and very few have any general consensus (90% plus in agreement) based on what is posted here on these boards. The Devs gather feedback from every board on these forums, and probably from the forums of other sites, they also have feedback in game and know why people leave the game, they then balance this with their experiance as game designers, information from other games on what is working. They then probably make design decisions which are compromises, not exactly what anyone wants, but a balance between what people want and what is needed; unfortunatly because people are generally selfish they see that the design isn't exactly what they wanted and complain about it (from both sides).