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EA. Why not start using Polls before making changes?

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Guest

Guest
Hail: After reading the arc cure thread stuff, and other changes made in the past, it just seems logicial to use a poll. All the advantages and disadvantages, and loop holes, and exploits and such would ALMOST ALL Be know in the Poll feedback from expierienced players.

Why always wait until it is done wrong on TC, and then change it, when you can get a lot of feedback first, tweek or just cancel it, and then put it on TC?
Just a thought.....
 
Kaj

Kaj

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Since it's nearly impossible to get a decent poll.

Relatively only very few people visit Stratics, and those are already the most listened to.
In the meanwhile very few Asian players visit Stratics, while they already make up 40-50% of the UO players, from what I've heard/read.

As for an ingame poll, many people have more than one account and people have different interests. I personally don't care about petball changes at all, so my votes, on all my accounts, would be fed by apathy, but would still count just as much as someone who cares a lot and knows the ins and outs.

I personally would dislike a poll on Stratics or uo.com, since only a select few visit those sites.
 
Sakkarah

Sakkarah

UO Legend
VIP
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I dont think it's a realistic expectation to want the Devs to ask permission for any change or to put up polls. IMHO, that would significantly slow the process and not necessarily have the results expected. I think having things on TC as we do is a form of "poll". A vast majority of us are quite vocally expressing our disagreement/concerns with the potential changes. Those changes aren't done yet. As long as there is that little buffer before implementation, I think we should be doing fine.

Then again, this was a fairly quick to perform change. But it might become a problem when they devote lots of hours into developping something that may meet with loads of resistance :/
 
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Guest

Guest
Who sez Stratics? Why not on TC as you login? Either client should allow a quick poll on a topic upon login - only on TC.

Thus it is gotten from players when they are going to test something. Lock to account, so one vote per poll. Lock is reset when new poll is established.
 
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Guest

Guest
Polls are problematic, particularly when having to do with balance issues. The majority will very seldom vote to nerf itself, after all. Putting stuff up on test center - and monitoring player reaction even after a publish goes live - generally gives more realistic results.
 
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Guest

Guest
uote: "I dont think it's a realistic expectation to want the Devs to ask permission for any change or to put up polls. IMHO, that would significantly slow the process and not necessarily have the results expected."

Read the test center update about Arc Cure. This is exactly what happened, and EA is asking for opionions on if they should put the change on live shards, or tweak the changes to Cure/arc cure/ect ect.

It takes time to do all the coding and stuff. Why not ask, "Hey, we are thinking of doing this tweak to this skill"? and finding out it may be a bad idea, BEOFRE WASTING TIME/RESOURCES to test it on TC.
 
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imported_ParadoxUO

Guest
why not on the login page... before "continue"...

a simple yes,no, etc... then move on to play.
 
G

Guest

Guest
<blockquote><hr>

Polls are problematic, particularly when having to do with balance issues. The majority will very seldom vote to nerf itself, after all. Putting stuff up on test center - and monitoring player reaction even after a publish goes live - generally gives more realistic results.

[/ QUOTE ]

Whens the last time any of you were on test center to look at the results?

Just because its on test center for testing don't mean you are going to hear any real feedback from the majority of the pvp scene if they have to go to a web forum like stratics to post thier feedback.

So all you all are doing is basically posting it on test center, asking for the stratics community to leave feedback. Half the people on stratics don't test, they just leave thier own opinions on the matter, which don't help nothing. Most of the other half arnt pvpers, and the ones that actually are go unheard by the vast majority of bullcrap from everyone else.

Not to mention the people that are really testing it, and experiencing it have no desire what so ever to want to come to the stratics community to express any thoughts on your latest changes.

suggestion: allow feedback to be submitted from IN GAME on the test center shard.

There you go, you get real feedback, from real players, that are ACTUALLY testing.
 
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Connor_Graham

Guest
"suggestion: allow feedback to be submitted from IN GAME on the test center shard.

There you go, you get real feedback, from real players, that are ACTUALLY testing."

Oh, and you forgot to mention completely unbiased...uh huh, uh huh.....
 
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imported_MoonglowMerchant

Guest
So, does that mean I'll be testing the petball changes after they go live since apparently no one at EA/Mythic cares enough to put petballs in bankboxes before it goes live?

Good grief.
 
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Guest

Guest
Does not DAoC use in game polls? How are they working/worked out?

Seems like if they work in that game, a similar system should work in UO.

Just asking.
 
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imported_MoonglowMerchant

Guest
<blockquote><hr>

Polls are problematic, particularly when having to do with balance issues. The majority will very seldom vote to nerf itself, after all. Putting stuff up on test center - and monitoring player reaction even after a publish goes live - generally gives more realistic results.

[/ QUOTE ]

That kind of backwards thinking is the reason this game is such a mess.

Although I've never seen a poll successfully used by OSI/EA/Mythic, the best process which yielded the best results was the post AOS PvP re-balance pass.

The process there was that players generated ideas to balance PvP, then we got feedback from the devs on what could be realistically implemented, there was further feedback, and then the coding was done.

The result was the best period for PvP that I can remember.

According to your logic Jeremy, that kind of process won't work because people won't "nerf themselves". Well, I can tell you from that experience that what people did wasn't "nerf themselves". What they did was provide feedback, which when weighed against other considerations improved balance.

The problem with that sort of thing now would be that EA has done such a good job of ignoring valuable feedback from players over the years that players just stopped giving feedback. Then, they went to play games where clever ideas were actually implemented.

Here we go again with the petballs.

There is a problem with this implementation that was pointed out even before the "design doc" was done.

Now, we can't even test the flawed design because there aren't any petballs on test.

According to you, that is ok because once it hits actual shards, then you will get the feedback you want anyway. Again, I just can't express how ridiculous I think that is.

You want to spend energy in the next publish cycle fixing things that were poorly implemented in this publish cycle just because you didn't

1. Properly use player feedback
2. Give players the tools to test changes

It's no wonder this game continually spins its wheels.
 
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Guest

Guest
I know I have mentioned it but I hope some thought goes into things like this.

To maintain Level 5 Poison, maybe weapons have to be poisoned daily.

Maybe Mages can partially cure and decrease intensity of poison. Level 5 to Level 4. Another cast maybe cure Level 4 or diminish it to 3. Cast again cured.


Not that I am saying do exactly above. But the game can be a bit more diverse in how things succeed and fail.
 
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Guest

Guest
<blockquote><hr>

<blockquote><hr>

Polls are problematic, particularly when having to do with balance issues. The majority will very seldom vote to nerf itself, after all. Putting stuff up on test center - and monitoring player reaction even after a publish goes live - generally gives more realistic results.

[/ QUOTE ]

Whens the last time any of you were on test center to look at the results?



[/ QUOTE ]*pokes*
Quiet down before I call the vamp on you.
They are on test shard more often than you realize. Just sometimes you can't see 'em
 
G

Guest

Guest
<blockquote><hr>

Putting stuff up on test center - and monitoring player reaction even after a publish goes live - generally gives more realistic results.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have to agree with this policy. That said, I think they would get even better results by allowing in game reporting of gameplay issues, if not on live servers then at least on Test Center. A lot of the more knowledgeable players I've known over the years had no interest in forums, seeing as time used participating in forum drama is time they could be using enjoying themselves in game.

Also, one problem with relying on opinion polls to drive gameplay changes is that no matter how they were handled (either via Stratics or via an in game gump of some sort), it would end up being ruled by the vocal minority. Stratics posters only entail a very small percentage of the players at large. They could run a poll about a feature, and even if it got 80% of the Stratics vote, that wouldn't necessarily mean even 20% of the playerbase would like it. And in-game gumps tend to be ignored, or disproportially weighted by people with multiple accounts (I used to have several, myself, and I know I was not the only one).

And in the end, no matter what they do it will not be universally liked. There have even been incidences of Developers doing what the players asked for, then been flamed by the same players for doing it. It really is a no win situation. What I'd like to see, and what seems to be happening, is Developers listening to player feedback and taking it into account when setting priorities and making balance changes. Not taking priorities from the players, or only doing what [this subset of] the players want, but letting them serve as a bit of a guiding force. What I'd really like to see is Devs having a tool to profile (anonymously, of course) what players actually do (if one doesn't already exist). That wouldn't bias to only take into account the type of people that post in forums, and it would actually be of more benefit gameplay-wise, as there tends to be a bit of a dichotomy between what users say and what they actually do.

So yeah, a bit rambly but even as an on again off again outspoken advocate for this change or that, I'd still much rather game developers NOT ask for permission before making changes. Except, perhaps, in really specific circumstances, like if they were proposing to completely and drastically change a gameplay element (e.g. the murderer system, one red all red).
 
P

pacific lily

Guest
<blockquote><hr>

<blockquote><hr>

Putting stuff up on test center - and monitoring player reaction even after a publish goes live - generally gives more realistic results.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have to agree with this policy. That said, I think they would get even better results by allowing in game reporting of gameplay issues, if not on live servers then at least on Test Center. A lot of the more knowledgeable players I've known over the years had no interest in forums, seeing as time used participating in forum drama is time they could be using enjoying themselves in game.

[/ QUOTE ] *edited out rest of reply to save space*


They have this feature in KR. I have used it extensively since KR was implemented.

Lily
 
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Guest

Guest
Hm, my mistake. Since there was a post or two mentioning the lack of being able to report in game, I was under the impression they were correct. Should have done more research first.

EDIT: If said feature is only in the KR client, then that hardly counts. A lot of people don't use said client.
 
G

Guest

Guest
<blockquote><hr>

The majority will very seldom vote to nerf itself, after all.

[/ QUOTE ]

Balancing doesn't have to mean "nerfing". You guys could always make some good changes to go along with the bad ones, you know.
 
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