I think it would be nice if MindArk made the polling system more transparent.
Right now we cast our votes and when the poll ends… that’s it. We never get to see the final results. So we don’t even know what the community actually voted for.
Another thing is we don’t know what the poll actually means. Is it just a feedback survey? Or is MindArk planning to take action based on the result? That part is never explained.
In many other games, when a poll ends the results are published, and if a change is made later it’s often mentioned that it came from a community poll. That lets players know their votes actually had a purpose.
I’m not saying MA has to follow every poll result. But at least showing the final results and telling us if the poll is just for feedback or if it’s meant to influence future changes would make the whole system feel much more transparent.
I think that polls have 2 purposes. First, it’s a cheap way to give the playerbase the impression that their opinion matters, and second, just to probe the thoughts of players without a pressure of action on those.
It’s not like they would actually remove autotargetting even if majority voted for that, because it would make people cycle a bit less per hour, and generally play less because of quicker exhaustion. But if results were public, they would have to either lie or shoot themselves in the foot.
Bonus: they can always use the poll results later to prove a point. Like, if we look at things in black in white, by voting for keeping F you are supporting botters. No, seriously. Without autotargetting, 90% of the bots would be gone. Complex OCR ones would manage, but the average botting Joe with a 5-lines script from Claude would be out of luck. Now, if the antibotters get excessively vocal in the future, MA can always say - you voted to keep things as they are.
For the record, I voted to keep autotargetting. People should be able to play the way the like, by pressing F, by clicking a mouse, by squeezing buttplug controllers if that’s their thing. Even botters wouldn’t be a problem in a healthy economy.
I agree to all of the above. I’d like to add that MindArk said that the votes will be weighed differently depending on a bunch of things related to individual players.
I’m saying that a dedicated miner, trader, … voting on the F-question has a different significance than a vote from a dedicated hunter. (I don’t even know what the F-key does for a miner…).
I assume we all know that a result or the interpretation of it can always be put into the perspective of what the questioner had in mind to begin with. That would also include the weighing.
Would I like to see a result? Yes.
Would it help me understand why MindArk then reacts to it in the way they do? No.
I thought the same thing - what are they even doing with this? They can get 1000 responses for yes or no and go “meh” and move on. It would be amazing if they had to do what we vote for… aka VOTING, otherwise this is a poll not a voting system. Still never heard an answer WHY they added synths so who knows why they do anything (money?)
great voting is finally here!
I’m guessing because changes won’t be made purely on a majority. MA may think something is only viable to change if 80% agree so when 70% agree they don’t change it, and then everyone freaks out.
Firstly, different polls can have different purposes. Sometimes we might just want some feedback on something, other times it may influence a direct decision.
Often when we discuss suggestions, ideas, complaints internally - it can be hard to know if it’s a case of a loud minority or a widely shared feeling within the playerbase. Thus, we can use this system to get a better idea of how the collective, or certain subsects of the playerbase really feel.
In the case of this specific poll, yes it is very much a serious question with intent and the possibility of change behind it. We often get a distorted view since in support cases and in other places online over the last years I have seen many loud calls to remove F. But as per poll results so far, it doesn’t seem to be a popular idea. Again, discrepancy between louder voices and the collective.
Aside from that, in cases where a poll is to help make a decision, it wouldn’t be the case that say a 51% favour would mean us making a change - we’d probably want to see a bigger majority in such cases.
I’ll be happy to post the results of this poll once it is over, but hope that answers the questions here as best I can
Thanks for the clarification, Socrates. Appreciate the response.
That clears things up for this poll. My confusion actually came from the previous poll about the Umbranoid event. Looking back, I wasn’t sure if it was just for feedback or if it was something that could actually influence future changes.
Maybe it would help if each poll had a small tag, something like [Feedback] or [Future Changes] , so players know what the poll is actually for before voting.
I’d also like to suggest making poll results a standard feature. Right now, after a poll ends it just shows “You voted: XYZ” . It would be nice if that changed to the final results once the voting period is over. I think that would make the whole system feel a lot more transparent, and there’d be no need for a forum post every time.
Replace the “Voting” CEF window to rendering the Forums there allowing for polls, comments and more accessible directly in game.
It then becomes a unified view of the loud minority and those who wish to vote but not talk (and is available to everyone from within the game, no excuses).
