About BMG-Created Polls.

[SarahSaurus]

I just saw that poll in Feedback about the Spy changes, and I think there are a lot of issues with it that BMG should have done better.

I like the idea of creating a poll, and giving the community the freedom to make a decision about the game, that's a really nice way to reach out to the community and make us feel like you care about the players. HOWEVER, this was sloppy. I noticed that I guess the poll was linked in-game, so many of the voters are people who had NEVER visited the forums before.

So here's what I suggest, possibly for this poll, and definitely for future ones:

-You need to give a briefing about the changes in the thread. Don't just say "Do you want this? Vote!". You, as BMG/BMG representatives should say "Here's an issue about the game, here's why it's being brought up now, and here are some pros and cons of changing it vs keeping it the same." This would be great because it both shows players that you guys actually understand the issue yourselves, and it also helps inform newer players about exactly what is going on. For instance, a lot of people in the thread have 1-2 forum posts, and they're all voting "no", either without any reasons given, or with reasons that have already been disproved in other threads, or simply don't make sense.

For example, someone might say No because they play All Any- well that's not really a valid reason when it comes to balancing, because All Any is not meant to be balanced. Or someone might say "No, because the Spy would be useless", and a lot of us have explained in various threads already how this is not true at all. If BMG could take the time to summarize the issue in the thread, then those players might be able to understand that the Spy would still be useful before they vote No; but without any kind of explanation of the change, newer players are left to their limited experience with the role, and they vote based off of inaccurate information.

-Also maybe there should be a restriction on who can vote in important polls like this, or BMG should review people's explanations and determine how many players voted based off of bad information/reasons. A restriction could be something like, players must have X forum posts, maybe even within certain dates (like if your last forum post was 2 years ago, how do we know you're up to date on what's happening with the game?). This could prevent new players from coming into the forum for the very first time, to vote on something they really don't understand or haven't experienced much in the game yet. If that isn't possible, then BMG really should consider checking through the thread to get an idea for why people are voting one way or the other. If 10 people vote No on something, but provide a flawed/illogical reasoning, yet 6 people vote Yes with a good, solid reason why, then does it really make sense for the change to be denied based on uninformed votes?

-Also think about the issue of multi-accounting in polls. I even saw a post of someone who threatened to make 10 more accounts and vote with them. I'm not sure exactly how much of an issue this is, or how it could be fixed, but it's something to keep in mind.

[RetralMega]

For example
If your account has existed for less then three months (being generous here, I really mean six) your vote is invalid.
If you don't supply a reason, your vote is invalid.
If you just quote someone else's reason, your vote is invalid.

[ElderSivart]

For example
If your account has existed for less then three months (being generous here, I really mean six) your vote is invalid.
If you don't supply a reason, your vote is invalid.
If you just quote someone else's reason, your vote is invalid.

I think four to six months would be good.
Supplying reasons is always good. I'd actually bother to write one if it was required because I do want the Mafia chat to be removed for the Spy.

[RetralMega]

For example
If your account has existed for less then three months (being generous here, I really mean six) your vote is invalid.
If you don't supply a reason, your vote is invalid.
If you just quote someone else's reason, your vote is invalid.

My account is six months old as of a few days ago.
/support

It's actually seven months old as of today.

[ElderSivart]

For example
If your account has existed for less then three months (being generous here, I really mean six) your vote is invalid.
If you don't supply a reason, your vote is invalid.
If you just quote someone else's reason, your vote is invalid.

My account is six months old as of a few days ago.
/support

It's actually seven months old as of today.

You're too fast. I meant to change that before anyone had a chance to reply.

[DarthaNyan]

Or have a weighting system for votes based on player's Elo in ranked: unqualified players' votes do not count.

[SarahSaurus]

Or have a weighting system for votes based on player's Elo in ranked: unqualified players' votes do not count.

Meh that sounds a little too complicated, and last time I played, Elo was still pretty broken. Not to mention it's never even been reset since Ranked beta. So maybe in a perfect world where Elo was actually a good indicator of experience/understanding of the game, but this is not that world.

[Ogeezalo]

For example
If your account has existed for less then three months (being generous here, I really mean six) your vote is invalid.
If you don't supply a reason, your vote is invalid.
If you just quote someone else's reason, your vote is invalid.

I also think adding to that, playing a certain amount of games would be helpful to filter out people who don't know what they're talking about. I was bewildered how many people were mentioning blackmailer reading jailor chat, I cringed and then passed out. I'm also sad because I couldn't vote with these rules.

[ScardyBob]

Better yet, don't do forum polls at all. There are unrepresentative of the playerbase and 'game design by popular vote' is a terrible idea.

[Megalomancer]

Better yet, don't do forum polls at all. There are unrepresentative of the playerbase and 'game design by popular vote' is a terrible idea.

No don't give them ideas, we've been demanding this since 2014.

Can we do what we did for the t-shirt and make a dummy to send poll results to?

[ScardyBob]

No don't give them ideas, we've been demanding this since 2014.

Can we do what we did for the t-shirt and make a dummy to send poll results to?

BMG should do a proper scientific poll or no poll at all. Forum polls are the worst of both worlds and are likely to cause more problems than not.

[ElderSivart]

If BMG wants to do public polls, I think it would be better for the link to the poll to show up in the game results screen after playing a Ranked (or RP) game.
In my opinion, we should balance for Ranked, and All Any is meant to be unbalanced, so that way we would get a higher concentration of the people that play Ranked mostly and know the current meta of the (supposedly) balanced mode.

[alex1234321]

Or have a weighting system for votes based on player's Elo in ranked: unqualified players' votes do not count.

What if you have very, very low Elo but have a lot of posts and know balance decently well (me). Elo is mostly luck based imo.

There is no real way to gauge whether people know what they are talking about besides having them actually cast their votes in the thread and votes without reasoning would not count (like in the Testing Grounds polls).

[MisaTange]

Another idea:

Yes -- I play Custom
Yes -- I play AllAny
Yes -- I play Ranked
No -- I play Custom
No -- I play AllAny
No -- I play Ranked

?? (The above represent poll choices)

[fornycation]

The only thing I wanted to see is some information about each side. How can you expect anyone to make a reasonable decision based on their own experience. BMG should have put arguments for and against the change on the very first post.

[orangeandblack5]

No time to retype, my thoughts:

How about they do exactly what they did, but require an explanation to your vote by having no poll but instead letting the community discuss and have "votes" be in actual posts

Bam way better

Simply disallowing a poll is all they needed to do to make the post a bit better.

Even better would be writing (or getting a community member [such as Nelly/Naru/you] to write) a short introduction to the topic, explain WHY this is an issue, and some previous fixes and changes that have been previously discussed. Hell, going a step further and letting people on the forums discuss the topic initially, then advertising it for more community input would go a long way, with almost no extra work from BMG.

1: Literally no other game development company on Earth has community polls that directly affect the game, and lots of other games have turned out fine.
2: If the majority was yes on the poll, which I agree with, I would still argue that it's a stupid system. Because it is.
3: Just have people vote with a /support or a /nosupport. You can then do a quick search and subtract one post from however many come up for each side. Easy peasy.

/Support or /Nosupport is basically voting yes/no on the poll.

Exactly. In this way you can search one or the other if you still want to see poll results, but you can also read the reasoning of the voters for each side.