I think they ought to scrap the 3D approach and do a 2D sidescroller instead.
Polling the poll
- Thread starter -o-
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Yes the opinion of the community should be important to Frontier. Because ultimately, it is the community which plays ED
The problem with all these recent polls, Proposals and discussion threads are that they're over 12 months too late. The game design is now too far along to be significantly changed in anyway. They work great on the Star Citizen forums as the design for that is currently still in it's infancy (although there are some fundamental aspects of the game that are now set in stone and will see very little change, if any) but here in Elite Land large sections of the design have already been approved, coded, tested and Alpha'd already.
I'm convinced at least one of the current regular poll makers is a university student studying Psychology and/or Philosophy trying to use the forum population for one or more assignments rather than someone who thinks they are right, FD is wrong and lots of polls will convince FD to do what they say. Either way I consider it trolling at best and a fruitless ego trip at worse.
I'm convinced at least one of the current regular poll makers is a university student studying Psychology and/or Philosophy trying to use the forum population for one or more assignments rather than someone who thinks they are right, FD is wrong and lots of polls will convince FD to do what they say. Either way I consider it trolling at best and a fruitless ego trip at worse.
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Yes, as soon as FD entered alpha it signalled the design was frozen. Otherwise they could not test that design because they would be testing a moving target. They may amend the *implementation* of that design with new releases, but that is merely in order to bring the deployment further into line with the design by way of defect fixing etc.
If the alpha shows that there are significant failings that require design rethinks, then they will re-enter design and then iteratively retest and they could at that point consider putting into play some feature requests, if demand justified it. But to amend anything pivotal to the design at this point, considering the project has slipped from KS estimates already (ie burned more money than anticipated) would mess up all their test plans and breed risk.
And FD would know about feature requests not from the forum but from the alpha surveys that the alpha testers are no doubt completing after each alpha release. These will have some quantative questions in so they can track effect of each release, but also qualitative, "what would improve your experience of ED?" etc... They would not look to random forum polls for such data as it would most likely not be framed in a meaningful way (in terms of requirements gathering).
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I think a better poll would have been -
Are pointless polls pointless?
There's been an influx of new blood (myself included); many of this number are determined to either make a name for themselves, to put their stamp on the game or just increase their post count. Many of these polls have already been covered in the ddf and a quick (well marathon) read would have saved a lot of (everyone else's) time and argument!
The rest of these polls generally tend to have a phrase like-"I've noticed that in star citizen..." or "I like the way star citizen does this...".
I tend to view them as trolling threads especially when the only valid opinion is that of the op; I just wish that people were savvy enough to refrain from indulging them too much.
At this point the only useful polls are the ones about game play that has been tested ie polls about alpha issues where there is a clear cause for concern.
The other kind of useful poll would be ones posted by FD...
Everything else is kind of pointless until we get into beta; as at this point things are already as good as nailed down. The only way they should change is if testing reveals a problem.
Are all these polls pointless till beta?
That might have got my vote
Its not really about whether or not FD will change the game based on a particular poll. That will weigh heavily on the strength of their stance on an issue vs the strength of the communities stand on an issue. A survey of damage vs gain.
I'm trying to gauge what kind of mindset forums members have to change - any change in the game which goes against the direction of FD, irrespective of its timing.
Some people are open to change in their general lives, while others are comfortable in their set ways. Considering that the age of many members is shall we say, more advanced, I think it is fair to say that in general, most of us have conservative views and are resistant to change. You see similar traits in one's political stance where a person may vote for the same party all their lives regardless of the party's policy or direction. It is the same reason why referendums are heavily weighted against change even before the change question is written.
I believe this also reflects in the results of some forum polls we are seeing.
Many of the polls which suggest a change in the game are doomed from the start because there are many members out there who will not deviate from the vision FD have. This may explain why I can only remember one poll/suggestion thread where a change is involved, which has recieved significant majority support against the FD design. This is supported so far by the results of the poll in this thread which is currently about 50%.
Changing the game at the post-design stage is not impossible or necessarily a negative action. You may remember at what stage of development (or more to the point, production) the radar was changed in the original Elite. However, a community driven process to trigger any change seems severely handicapped from the start because many within that community do not want any community driven change - regardless of what that change is.
I'm trying to gauge what kind of mindset forums members have to change - any change in the game which goes against the direction of FD, irrespective of its timing.
Some people are open to change in their general lives, while others are comfortable in their set ways. Considering that the age of many members is shall we say, more advanced, I think it is fair to say that in general, most of us have conservative views and are resistant to change. You see similar traits in one's political stance where a person may vote for the same party all their lives regardless of the party's policy or direction. It is the same reason why referendums are heavily weighted against change even before the change question is written.
I believe this also reflects in the results of some forum polls we are seeing.
Many of the polls which suggest a change in the game are doomed from the start because there are many members out there who will not deviate from the vision FD have. This may explain why I can only remember one poll/suggestion thread where a change is involved, which has recieved significant majority support against the FD design. This is supported so far by the results of the poll in this thread which is currently about 50%.
Changing the game at the post-design stage is not impossible or necessarily a negative action. You may remember at what stage of development (or more to the point, production) the radar was changed in the original Elite. However, a community driven process to trigger any change seems severely handicapped from the start because many within that community do not want any community driven change - regardless of what that change is.
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And that is one reason why FD may not specifically ignore forum polls, but certainly not take them as gospel. The forum represents a tiny and skewed selection of players. We are the nostalgia freaks drawn here by the KS, but if ED is to be a success over a long-term (Braben says this is the last Elite game) then they need to attract young blood to the game in numbers far exceeding the handful of us here.
So we are but one small slice of their desired market and as such anything we say has to be normalised against that.
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The makers of Duke Nukem Forever were continually changing their game design due to outside pressures, including their forum community. Look how many millions of dollars and years of wasted code they got through before releasing exactly what everyone, who brought up a new discussion thread or invented another poll or insisted a certain bit of technology was supported or used, wanted the game to be. Anyone here actually bought it or managed to keep playing it for more than an hour when it did finally get released?
No one here is against change in and of itself. There have been a lot of changes to the ED design, one very large change (super-cruise) while most are quite small, due to forum influence primarily through the DDF. Unfortunately FD don't have limitless funds, community support and market patience to keep swapping and changing to suit a bunch of late-comers throwing about half baked ideas and using poorly conceived arguments in attempts to get FD to stroke their egos. Which is basically what all these polls are doing at this stage of the development.
There is no more time, most likely no more of our collective backer money and almost no room for manoeuvre left in progress of development to start taking any of these ideas seriously as design changes anymore.
Had they been around 13 months ago there would have been a lot more interest in what these people had to say and the DDF members would have given them serious consideration but now it's just noise. Not because the community doesn't want to listen but because at this stage there is very little point in listening to anything not coming out of the Alpha forums and not directly related to the current design and code.
In a nutshell these people should have been here 13 months ago if they wanted their ideas to have any chance of getting into the design. They weren't. They've blown it.
No one here is against change in and of itself. There have been a lot of changes to the ED design, one very large change (super-cruise) while most are quite small, due to forum influence primarily through the DDF. Unfortunately FD don't have limitless funds, community support and market patience to keep swapping and changing to suit a bunch of late-comers throwing about half baked ideas and using poorly conceived arguments in attempts to get FD to stroke their egos. Which is basically what all these polls are doing at this stage of the development.
There is no more time, most likely no more of our collective backer money and almost no room for manoeuvre left in progress of development to start taking any of these ideas seriously as design changes anymore.
Had they been around 13 months ago there would have been a lot more interest in what these people had to say and the DDF members would have given them serious consideration but now it's just noise. Not because the community doesn't want to listen but because at this stage there is very little point in listening to anything not coming out of the Alpha forums and not directly related to the current design and code.
In a nutshell these people should have been here 13 months ago if they wanted their ideas to have any chance of getting into the design. They weren't. They've blown it.
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