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Create feature to actually vote for suggestions

20 replies [Last post]
Thu, 03/27/2014 - 11:56
Deleted-Knight's picture
Deleted-Knight

I think it's in the interest of the developers and the players to make popular suggestions more prominent.
There should be a voting/ranking system (kind of like Reddit) through which players can literally upvote or downvote suggestions they like instead of posting +1 on the thread. This way, popular suggestions will not be pushed back by the influx of more recent, but less popular suggestions.
Alternatively, you guys can create monthly polls with some changes the developers are considering. Players can then directly vote for the suggestions they like. I think that will give developers more quantitative feedback about what the community wants. In addition, it allows the players to know what suggestions are being considered and what is clearly off the table.

tl;dr version:
1. Add vote counters to every thread on the Suggestions forum. Allow players to vote for or against each suggestion. Sort the suggestions by positive popularity.
2. If #1 is too hard to implement, create a monthly poll to get feedback from players. Poll should list ideas the developers are considering.

Ideally each suggestion should be formatted like this:

------Descriptive Title----------------------------------------[+ votes / - votes] <--click on one to vote; can only vote once.
(Link to details)________(Link to discussion thread)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thu, 03/27/2014 - 11:58
#1
Supersonicm's picture
Supersonicm
Erm

Isnt that kinda mean?

Thu, 03/27/2014 - 12:02
#2
Thunder-The-Bright's picture
Thunder-The-Bright
gods ain't gonna help you, son.

"monthly" is too much for the pace of OOO. no, I'm not kidd- wait, your name implies that you are quite a seasoned player, you already know that.
besides, I don't know if the forum community can handle things like mass trolling effect.

Thu, 03/27/2014 - 12:20
#3
Deleted-Knight's picture
Deleted-Knight
.

@Supersonicm
How is it mean? I think it's more mean to have a suggestion forum and not give any quantitative feedback whatsoever.

@Thunder-The-Bright
Option 1:
Because not implementing a voting system is doing such a great job at eliminating troll suggestions. If anything, the current system is burying legitimate suggestions under trash ones. A few trolls can post many unrealistic suggestions in short amount of time and push a perfectly reasonable and valid suggestion to the second page.
Once the system is created, little maintenance is required. The devs can periodically "lock" high ranking suggestions that they are not considering and send it to the back. Other than that, it's all about the players voting.

Option 2:
It may take time to create the system, but after that it shouldn't take more than 2 minutes to update the polls and reset the counters. If the development team is remotely organized, they probably already have discussions about where they want to go anyways. The polls will just be a way for the community to be part of that discussion. Remember the devs control what gets on the polls, so no trolling is possible.

Thu, 03/27/2014 - 13:33
#4
Skyguarder's picture
Skyguarder

Firstly, OOO doesn't have a forum manger company. It used to be Drupal, but OOO fired them. Secondly, players can create the polls themselves.

Thu, 03/27/2014 - 13:48
#5
Trats-Romra's picture
Trats-Romra
@Auto-Target

Do you already considered multiple accounts' problem?

Thu, 03/27/2014 - 14:30
#6
Deleted-Knight's picture
Deleted-Knight
.

@Skyguarder
There are polls on SK forums? The only polling system I've seen is people replying with +1 to a thread.
How big is OOO's staff? From the sound of it, there's like 8 people managing this game, 4 which are probably devs. That's kind of sad.

@Trats-Romra
Let's say there's 20 people different people who voted on a popular suggestion. 18 up, 2 down. Let's say one of those people really hated the suggestion so he decided to make alts just to downvote that suggestion. Think about how many alts he'll need to make a significant difference. After 7 alt accounts, there is still a +9 support for the suggestion. This is assuming a population of 20. Realistically, a really popular suggestion should have much more than 20 people voting on it.

Thu, 03/27/2014 - 14:40
#7
Trats-Romra's picture
Trats-Romra
@Auto-Target

But the inverse can occur too:
20 up on a post.
Expectation: 20 people liked it.
Reality: 5 people with 4 alts liked it.

Don't believe? There was a person on SK that had 4 different accounts.
It's possible.

Thu, 03/27/2014 - 15:14
#8
Deleted-Knight's picture
Deleted-Knight
@Trats-Romra

If there exists five people with four alts each and they all happen to like that one suggestion, then yes, it would get 20 upvotes.
In my example, the population is 20 people.

If 5/20 people agreed, then 1/4th of the population liked the suggestion.
20 votes by the people with alts = 25% agreed but it seems like 100% agreed
If the population is bigger, say 100, then
20 votes by people with alts = 5% agreed, but it seems like 20% agreed

The ratio of the actual agreement compared to the apparent agreement is always 1/4 since each of those people only have 4 accounts.
The amount of sway the multi-account people get is dependent on the average number of accounts they own.
Basically you can't assume five people with alts will always agree with each other, because then I can assume 20 people without alts can always agree with each other as well.

Do people with alts get an advantage? Of course, but the system is not meant to be to precise. It's meant to show what is popular, what is not, and what is controversial.

Thu, 03/27/2014 - 15:27
#9
Deleted-Knight's picture
Deleted-Knight
Another benefit

Another benefit would be the ability to avoid unnecessary debates like the ones we're having.
If you don't like my suggestion, you can only downvote it once (plus however many alts you have if you're really passionate). People won't have to read through entire debates to figure out how popular the suggestion is.

Scenario: Someone posts a suggestion. 20 people like it. 3 people don't like it.

In current system:
20 people reply with "+1". The 3 people who didn't like it start a debate that goes on for 5 pages.
Dev comes and looks at the thread, sees the huge debate and thinks "too controversial, not very popular, probably not worth my time"

In ranking system:
20 upvotes, 3 downvotes
Dev comes and thinks, "20-3 means a lot more players like it than dislike it so far, I should probably take a look".
If he really wants to see both side's point of view, then he can look through the debate on the thread.

Thu, 03/27/2014 - 17:02
#10
Trats-Romra's picture
Trats-Romra
@Auto-Target

Ok, for while, I'm conviced. Your idea might work.

Thu, 03/27/2014 - 22:24
#11
Fehzor's picture
Fehzor

I wonder if I could code this and send it to them. It doesn't sound that hard to be honest, and it would be a really cool way to see what the "good suggestions" are.

Fri, 03/28/2014 - 13:06
#12
Deleted-Knight's picture
Deleted-Knight
@Fehzor

That'll be awesome! It would definitely make it more likely to be implemented.
I think the most difficult part would be preventing people on the same account from voting twice. You will need to flag every suggestion that the player has voted on and store that somewhere. Since only OOO knows how account data is stored, that may be a problem.

Fri, 03/28/2014 - 16:34
#13
Draycos's picture
Draycos

The problem tied to a voting system is that a suggestion could actually be healthy for the game, but heavily downvoted because players don't want it.

For instance, UVs. Nobody with a high-power UV (or three) would want to lose it (them), even if UVs are pretty gamebreaking at high-power, and one of the things that keeps 'casual' players from being able to compete fairly in Lockdown. Realistically, there's no way to accurately give compensation for something like UVs, which have a gambling system rigged up for them. [But I seriously believe they're unhealthy for the game, crown sink or not.]

The inverse is also true; something players want might be unhealthy for the game! Some people might want to hold on to their exclusive gear from temporary events, because it'd be special that way. But at the same time, anyone who just happened to join later or was unable to play during that time would be completely left out. That'd be just okay if stuff like that was purely cosmetic, but then there's things like the Obsidian Crusher and Black Kat Cowl and Tortodrone shields.. things that have some sort of stat variation or even entirely different mechanics that only a select few will ever be able to use. That's bad.

Another thing to consider is that some people might vote for what they can read, and not bother voting for something good (or even bad) that has a massive wall of text or a discussion of game mechanics that they can't offer anything to.

And, even more importantly, it's not like everyone has equal merit to vote on everything- somebody just starting out and someone who knows how the game works like the back of their hand have different levels of experience. A newer player would have a better idea of what the 'new player experience' is, and an older player wouldn't have a clue. Similarly, a newer player wouldn't be able to reliably discuss gear/enemy/level design, but an older player would.

It just wouldn't work as well as it sounds.

Fri, 03/28/2014 - 17:52
#14
Deleted-Knight's picture
Deleted-Knight
@Dracos

I think you misunderstood. I'm proposing the suggestions be ranked, not completely replaced by a new system. All the discussion that currently occurs will still occur. The only difference is players can vote on suggestions they like to "bump" them up the ranks.

You seriously think OOOs would make a change that would cause all the triple UV people to be unhappy? That won't happen regardless if the ranking system exists or not. The developers are interested in making the most people happy. The whole point of the ranking/polling system is to make it easier for them (and the community) to see what suggestions are liked by a larger portion of the population.
No group is excluded. Everyone who wishes to do so is able to "cast a ballot" on a suggestion. Admittedly those who don't look on the forums lose out, but they probably aren't interested anyways if they don't bother looking.

Fri, 03/28/2014 - 18:29
#15
Draycos's picture
Draycos

My point is I don't want the worth of someone's argument being influenced by a voting mechanism. Without one, people are judged for having good ideas and arguments, not mob mentality..

Fri, 03/28/2014 - 20:25
#16
Deleted-Knight's picture
Deleted-Knight
.

How does saying "+1" differ than an upvote?
If you want to know both sides of the issue, click the link to the thread and see the discussion. If you want to eliminate influence by others, simply look at the suggestion and cast your vote without looking at the discussion.
^Heck, that's reducing mob mentality, not increasing.

The main problem with conversation style "suggestions" is that they get cluttered with arguments (like the ones happening on this thread). Developers don't have time to sift through every suggestion and figure out if most of the community likes it or not. The ranking system allows them to quickly see that.

Fri, 03/28/2014 - 21:07
#17
Draycos's picture
Draycos

I figure at least one of the community managers summarizes and relays what they see to the devs.

What I mean by "mob mentality" is that there are people out there that will upvote things without really thinking about them, simply because a lot of other people upvoted it before them. Then there's cases where things that are easiest to agree with and shortest in length are likely to have higher ratings, simply because some people might not read the walls of text in other threads..

Call me insane, but I'm a firm believer that a good argument is better than being backed by more people.

Being able to prove your ideas are right is a good thing, and arguing helps to iron out any possible flaws. As long as there's no mud-slinging and hair-pulling, it's healthy. I also like to think it gives better feedback overall.

If voting was ever implemented, there are a few things that could help you get the best of both worlds (what is right, not what is most popular + organizing things by score).

-Above all else, do NOT track points across comments/suggestions like with Reddit. Even if they're meaningless internet points, some people WILL try to hunt for them instead of actually being helpful.

-Multiple sorting types. It could be helpful to have an option that ranks things by the amount of votes they've received, both positive and negative, to pinpoint controversial topics (which would be prime targets for dev-to-player interaction). Then there's 'order by positive (or negative) score' and then the standard 'most recent' we've got right now.

______________

I think what I'm most wary of is that some "good" suggestions would die out not because they were bad, but because they just didn't get enough community attention for some reason. I've seen plenty threads go by that have solid arguments/ideas but die off because there's nothing left to discuss..

Usually, controversial threads or maximum-hate-petition threads are all that survive longer than a few days; whatever gets the most posts gets the longest life.

I don't think I'm arguing with you for the right reason right now, because I'm being concerned with a problem that would exist anyway..

_________________

Also! If you want to get rid of your subject line, put a zero in that field.

Sat, 03/29/2014 - 12:13
#18
Deleted-Knight's picture
Deleted-Knight

Multiple ranking system definitely wouldn't hurt. It will take more work to code though.

Bad suggestions that become popular aren't wasteful.
Take the example that someone wanted to change the heating system by adding equipment stations to every floor on the boss level. Suppose lots of people rashly upvote it because they want to heat faster. They did not consider the problems this may cause to the overall game stability. Nonetheless this suggestion will come into OOO's attention because of all the upvotes. Is that bad? OOO may not implement that particular suggestion, but they now know lots of people are frustrated with the heating system. User feedback has been quantified.
In theory, that was a bad suggestion, but in practice it provided beneficial feedback to the developers. It's highly unlikely that someone's suggestion is so well thought out and perfect that the devs implement it exactly. The point is to state a desire and demonstrate that desire is shared by a lot of people.

"I've seen plenty threads go by that have solid arguments/ideas but die off because there's nothing left to discuss."
^That's exactly why we need a ranking system. If there's a solid argument on a suggestion, it would get more votes and will not die off even when inactive.

Sat, 03/29/2014 - 12:23
#19
Draycos's picture
Draycos

True, true.

And then you have to ask...

Can Drupal even do any of this? Do they even have a web designer around to change anything on the website at all?

Sun, 03/30/2014 - 20:25
#20
Hearthstone's picture
Hearthstone

^^

I don't think so...

Anyways, I like the idea.

Vote: Yus.

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