Jita Park Speakers Corner

Still harping on about this demographical representation, I see.

I'm still waiting for a clarification as to why looking at what ships people have, what they fly, where they fly it, how they fit it and just what they do with it, what they post on forums etc in general is insufficient, and why you feel the need to actively bother people with questionaires as well will actually help. I think you'll find that people are lazy.

And of course, there's the question of why replace the CSM.

Incorrect.
See, I can do that too.


Also Himlar thinks CSM's are not currently working as intended, because they are too focused on one part of the gameplay.








Thx for bumping my idea!

No?

**** no.
This expansion is CCP trying to rescue their own ass with stuff that THE PLAYERS have been asking for for YEARS because subscriptions suddenly dropped off of the map.



The CSM should not be taking credit for things like "fixing blasters" and "Nerfing Suppers", as if it was somehow their idea.

I disagree.
We should not do that, we should first replace them with something better.


That better thing does not need to be invented, because all corporations selling something to large groups of people gather "Demographics" and do bean counting. That is what CCP should be doing now, and on a much larger scale then they ever have before.




P.S.
Lord you should stop hating on the CSM...












...& aren't out of context word games fun!

Personally I'd take the "during login" option. One question per poll. Possibly even in dialog form i.e. mandatory.

Yeah I know that would spawn some hate intially but once the designers at CCP start taking poll results into account I believe people would realize how drastically it improves their game, how efficient this kind of feedback loop is, and praise it as the best thing since sliced bread.

We do that sort of thing in my company with people who are really really good at datamining and these sorts of things and it works great (although we don't make it mandatory, yet). Design has direct access to sites where poll results are being presented pretty much in realtime, and they've become a central tool in their day to day business. Dealing with some 3.2m customers worldwide it seems to be the right thing to do.
You want the feedback loop between your customers and your designers to be as tight as humanly possible. Whatever entitiy you add to that loop can dilute the flow of information and channel it in ways you don't anticipate and / or intend, thereby reducing the efficiency of the whole thing.

Looking at the whole CSM thing there are multiple entities doing this. First you have only a tiny fraction of your customers electing a council, and then that council channels information with a very strong bias. It then relays that information to a few persons within the company, you then relay it over to where it matters, again with a bias.
This is just bound to fail and it does. In my opinion people, especially those involved in the whole thing, don't even realize how much it actually fails to handle the task it was created for.

Rewards aren't the right approach. People should be more than happy to take the polls based on their positive impact on the game. And that will happen if CCP put some competent people in charge of this. Statistics and polling is a complex field. You need some expertise in this field if you want to get meaningful results. You certainly don't do this with a bunch of armchair politicians.

1. A standardized format is not really something that I would claim to be able to come up with spur of the moment. In my OP I simply gave one possible example. Many formats are possible.



2. If it is a website attached to these forums, or if it is something that I can bring up in game like the map or esc options, the result would be the same. So it does not matter.



If I had a choice... I'd say in game or a new website all together, because too many people have been repelled from these forums forever.

The problem I see with the polls is that if it's in-game, people like me (who'll make more isk than whatever poll can generate when logged out) will just flat out ignore it. If it's during login, people like me'll get pissed off and just select whatever they need to select just to get past it. It's not called polls online.

As to this:

So you've spent 9 pages evading answering exactly this question, and finally, when MaiLina KaTar does the job for you, you jump on it?

Ok.

in-game polls is going to be ignored by people like me who can't even be arsed to make a proper character portrait on more than 1 out of 5 chars. The rest are just randomized to get through it as soon as possible, and even then just because it was made mandatory.

They have a literal metric fucktonne of statistics if they need it, in the database itself. Usage pattern, behavioral patterns, economic patterns, over time and in real-time if they so choose. It'll tell them precisely what the players are doing, where, how, and with what.

As to the players' opinions, I suspect you'd find that forums would be about as accurate a themometer for player opinion (if not more so if it's made mandatory for the reasons I've outlined prior re: random clicking just to get out of it) as your polling.

Stopping to quote right there, because that's one of the crucial things CCP need to fix within their company.
You must, absolutely must have a team of professionals who excel at getting intel about customer concerns. As I said this is not easy, it requires a lot of expertise, and it demands that you dedicate paid employees who are responsible and accountable. This is where good business processes and said tight feedback loops are put to the test.

When it gets to the point where your customers are up in arms cause "you're not listening" you know you ****** up and you need to revise those processes and rebuild them from scratch if necessary.

And once again, no, you do not do this with a bunch of unpaid, biased nerds, elected by a tiny fraction of the customer base, who do it part time using unprofessional means. This is not "Stellar Management" it's a recipe for disaster and the past years provide more than enough evidence.