Want a real feedback? Make an in-game poll.

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Sargoth_CZ#3391 написал:

Forums, Reddit, Streamers or Steam reviews won't give you the objective feedback.

Every active player should have the option in-game to answer your list of questions or take a part in a poll.

You obviously listen to your playerbase. Problem is, certain players tend to be more loud than others. Very often that group is never satisfied with changes, constantly wanting contradicting things. Maps are too big -> Maps are too small.

"The squeaky wheel gets the grease."
As the saying goes. You're definitely correct about perceptions based on a vocal minority.

Great idea. +1
I think you explained it very well.

They would need to take a few precautions to guard against people keen on manipulating the feedback data with many accounts; which they could do by looking at time spent in the account, and other indicators that the account belongs to a legitimate 'mean' player, as opposed to a bot.

And they wouldn't necessarily have to commit to any inferences by the polling data. They could just use it as a tool, and make an informed choice about their design based on that information, instead of reddit, content creators, or the forums alone. And they could ask questions that the community themselves may not even be bringing up as an issue.

A difficult task for GGG, is not only to look at the majority opinion, but to also consider the points being made. Feedback matters, but I believe they should care less about what people are saying they want, and care more about the reasons they give. Sound game design is going to be contingent on sound reasoning.

+1 for OP

Many indie companies do this and with good enough automation can lead to good results.

Albeit I do hope that a lot of "feedback" already comes in the form of data crunching, like seeing to what players die the most in the game and thus making conclusions about that mechanics balance etc.

But contextual opinions are hard to gather.

Could be an optional setting where game asks you to opt-in if you want to give feedback periodically about the game, like a lil popup appearing asking "was the bossfight fun?" after you beat it. Of course this should only happen if the player actively opts-into such a feature and never should be turned on automatically without player himself doing it.

It wont magically solve problems, but it can be a helpful indicator for dev team in the long run.

I agree with what everyone has been saying, in-game poll is a great starting point for general feedback. Hard to say how many people would actually use it but still probs a decent idea.

Kinda surprised they havent had a poll of any kind. Albeit kinda outta left field they could even do surveys on their community forums (like some studios have done in the past) that might be a bit of a stretch but just throwing out ideas, seeing if they might stick.

Polls for the player only end in disaster and just shows they don't know what they want.

Source: Runescape
The developers held a poll for the controversial Evolution of Combat (EoC) twice, once for implementation and second for keeping. Both times, the results showed the mechanic be added and later kept despite the blowback from the community. What happened in the end? Runescape 3 is dead and the vast majority of the playerbase migrated to OSRS which doesn't have EoC.

The players killed their own game by telling Jagex what they thought they wanted. RS2 and RS3 veterans are now stuck with either playing in empty worlds, or starting everything over again in OSRS so they can engage with other people.

So no, there shouldn't be an in-game poll.

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Pizzarugi#6258 написал:

Polls for the player only end in disaster and just shows they don't know what they want.

You're skipping a few important beats with your reasoning, and making a few assumptions. Let's break it down.

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Pizzarugi#6258 написал:

Source: Runescape

This anecdote is a 'hasty generalization'. The implied argument here, is that because an something(a poll) has sometimes led to negative outcomes, that means it is never a good idea.

Here's an example:
"I got food poisoning once from a food truck, so all food trucks are unsafe."

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Pizzarugi#6258 написал:

The developers held a poll for the controversial Evolution of Combat (EoC) twice, once for implementation and second for keeping. Both times, the results showed the mechanic be added and later kept despite the blowback from the community. What happened in the end? Runescape 3 is dead and the vast majority of the playerbase migrated to OSRS which doesn't have EoC.

Here's another part of the scenario that you are leaving out. A poll is merely an instrument to gain information. It is not a vote. A poll must be designed intelligently, with the correct framing, to ask a particular question about something for which you want to take into account popular opinion. The onus is still on the developer to think critically about the question they ask, and the implications of the answer, and to make a judgment call based on that answer.

Without a poll, the developer is still making a decision, either way. What a poll does, is give the developer additional information, if they decide that player opinion is pertinent to a decision.

But you are describing polls as though they remove agency from the developer, and as though the question and framing presented are not relevant considerations. Yet, I don't suppose you would have an issue with the developers to listening to a few vocal people in the forums, or feedback from content creator audiences. Each with an inherently slanted bias for.. Whatever sort of persuasion a person with those proclivities would have. I'll leave that to your imagination.

I think that forum discussion, and polls, could each have their strengths and weaknesses. They're both tools, and it's up to the user to apply them correctly. In this case, GGG.

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Sargoth_CZ#3391 написал:

Forums, Reddit, Streamers or Steam reviews won't give you the objective feedback.

Does GGG read their own forums? From what I can tell, beyond their own internal data they don't have that much time to look at feedback and just rely on Reddit and Streamers for feedback.

I'd rather quit and play something else than to make a director and their team compromise their vision at every turn, even if I was critical of most of their decisions.