Polling Booth / Station

[Greb]

I see a lot of controversy about dev choices regarding balance and stuff. Don't need to repeat it or anything, but I had a random idea: polling stations installed on your battleship.

Thinking about it, voting and polling is DEMOCRATIC in nature, right? So letting us vote to "do our part" would make sense, if the devs ran regular polls to collect information directly from the game itself, not some Discord full of sycophants or whatever, not Steam discussions which probably goes completely ignored, and not Reddit which is full of people downvoting anyone who doesn't sing the same tune as everyone else...just a pure and simple poll for people to vote in.

Give players 1 Medal for voting as a reward for "doing your part" to ensure smooth and well managed democracy carrying on and keeping Super Earth great, etc etc.

They could run a poll every few days, or even every day, sometimes full of random stuff that's just for fun, and other times talking about if certain weapons need a nerf or a buff, what difficulty people play on, what mission type is the most / least popular, all that kind of stuff, reduced to a simple poll to collect information useful to the future of the game.

That could be good, right? We get a free medal, for what it's worth, and they get 100,000+ votes for / against stuff. It'd definitely fit with the theme of the game, and they could add a simple ballot box or voting terminal on the ship somewhere that players could check in every day.

What do you think?

[⛧ $P00KY DA $CARY ⛧]

Love this. Would also make the playerbase feel included in the balancing process, creating a lot less frustration then the balancing does now. As you say, it'd be more of a giding arrow, rather then set in stone input for the devs, incase they are afraid of people tampering with the data en-mass.

[King Bravo]

yeah the players should defiantly be making the decisions. devs have proven how stupid they are multiple times. runescape has something like this i think

[Lockheedp382]

LOVE IT!

[Greb]

Originally posted by ⛧ $P00KY DA $CARY ⛧:

Love this. Would also make the playerbase feel included in the balancing process, creating a lot less frustration then the balancing does now. As you say, it'd be more of a giding arrow, rather then set in stone input for the devs, incase they are afraid of people tampering with the data en-mass.

Thank you! Yeah exactly, it's in-game so they know it'll be by people who play the game and such, and it'd be somewhat uninfluenced by other people, just a private vote you can cast mostly anonymously and such. Would be good, and it'd reach even the "silent majority" too, who might otherwise ignore social media or official hangouts. Maybe.

Originally posted by King Bravo:

yeah the players should defiantly be making the decisions. devs have proven how stupid they are multiple times. runescape has something like this i think

It would be good to at least let the devs see an immediate impact on things so they can delve deeper if they need to. Players wouldn't really be in charge, but they could at least hope their feedback is taken into account.

And when / if they decide to nerf something, they could see what players would be happy to lose or think should be modified, if they offer a poll filled with a bunch of different options. Not just for nerfs though, it could be for anything, like what planet players are most interested in visiting next, etc.

Keeping the players happy (and encouraged to log in regularly to check the daily poll or something) in a live service game is pretty important, I'd say!

Originally posted by Lockheedp382:

LOVE IT!

Yay

[Ishan451]

Originally posted by Greb:

What do you think?

I think you are late to the party:
https://discord.com/channels/1102970375731691612/1102973812179488798/1240674784799490209

Originally posted by "Twinbeard":

Q: Would you ever consider taking some of the polls you run in the Discord server and posting them on the game itself? It would increase the sample size of players and give the team a better scope of the opinions of more players who may not use Discord or follow on social media. Again just a suggestion

A:
Hi! We very much want to have in-game comms (devs > players) with all the possibilities it would bring in terms of both informing and polling a substantially larger portion of the player base. I hope we will able to make a system like that in the future, but I can't make any promises.

[Midas]

Absolutely. They should let us vote between two highly managed choices that both achieve the same end result.

[Corey Greyfox]

Managed Democracy. They will ask a series of questions, and then based on our answers, will tell us which choice we made. :)

[27]

Best idea I've seen on this forum

[ObsidianKey]

Has the side possibility of raising player numbers.

[Lord451]

Wow, I can't wait to have a game by committee and wait until it becomes the most mediocre experience possible.

[Greb]

Originally posted by Ishan451:

I think you are late to the party:
https://discord.com/channels/1102970375731691612/1102973812179488798/1240674784799490209

Aw man! Well, in my defence I don't use Discord, at least not official ones lol. Well, consider it more voices in the crowd, demanding justice and democracy

Originally posted by Midas:

Absolutely. They should let us vote between two highly managed choices that both achieve the same end result.

Originally posted by Corey Greyfox:

Managed Democracy. They will ask a series of questions, and then based on our answers, will tell us which choice we made. :)

How do you like the taste of Freedom!? Yeah it would be funny, between serious polls plenty of random generic polls that all say the same thing just worded differently. Democracy in action! Enjoy your stay on Super Earth!

Originally posted by PrisRad:

Best idea I've seen on this forum

Wahey

Originally posted by ObsidianKey:

Has the side possibility of raising player numbers.

Yeah, or at the very least keeping player numbers up as well, as maybe it'd be enough to get people logging in every day, at least. I dunno. The illusion that your voice is being heard and that the devs might actually be listening

Originally posted by Lord451:

Wow, I can't wait to have a game by committee and wait until it becomes the most mediocre experience possible.

Well, I've seen some stuff. Mostly cherrypicked I'm sure, of random people in various places pleading with the devs to have even more fun removed, stuff like that. I don't know who the devs listen to, but I figure there's a lot of people who just don't use social media at all who's voices don't get heard (until they negatively review the game and leave anyway, lol.)

I don't think a poll would be strong enough to make decisions on the game, it just gives people in game actually playing the game (the only people who matter, in my opinion) a line to vote on the stuff they are interested or not interested in.

It might improve things anyway