In-game polling feature

jasonrohrer · 2019-06-17 18:43:35

I'm thinking about adding an in-game polling feature this week.

This will help me answer questions about what the community ACTUALLY thinks, including the quieter community members who aren't bothered enough to post in the forums.

One hard aspect of this is that I need to show the polling question to someone at the right time. If the feature in question is brand new, I need to wait a few days before asking about it, and even a few days later, it makes no sense to ask a brand new player who just joined.

What would really suck is if the question were presented to a player who simply didn't know their own answer (yet), but they felt forced to answer randomly. Obviously, I could include an "ask me later" button there, but there might still be some anxiety about not answering NOW.

I think I need some way to limit the exposure of the question to someone who meets certain criteria. Obviously, don't show it to brand new players (so there should be some lives-lived threshold), and then maybe also don't show it to players who haven't lived X lives since the poll was posted (to make sure that, even if they aren't a new player, they've had enough time to play with the new feature before answering).

WumboJumbo · 2019-06-17 18:52:19

jasonrohrer wrote:

I'm thinking about adding an in-game polling feature this week.
This will help me answer questions about what the community ACTUALLY thinks, including the quieter community members who aren't bothered enough to post in the forums.

That would definitely help broaden HELPFUL suggestions and complaints.

InSpace · 2019-06-17 19:01:31

Noo don't add pollution to the game!

Amon · 2019-06-17 19:04:45

Would the polling system take in account what things you recently did in the lives you played?

Twisted · 2019-06-17 19:10:16

Only people who lived to old age at least once.

Only people who have spent their buffer lives.

Only people who played for at least X hours (in the last X days).

Only people who lived out at least X 10+ min lives (in the last X days).

Only people who (recently?) used the feature relevant to the question (i.e. if you're asking about crafting axes ask only if they crafted an axe).

Don't ask people right after they've been murdered (if they are murdered they might be angry and answer differently than usual)(again, could be relative to the posed question).

futurebird · 2019-06-17 22:27:05

If you randomly select people you'd only need to poll about 100-200 people to get a good sample for a given concern. I would be careful to spread the poll over various times of day since different regions and player types are active at different hours.

I wouldn't restrict the poll at all based on how much someone plays or any other factor, but use that data as a filter later to refine the results.

Some "new" players may be people with multiple accounts. Some people who "have not played recently" may be active on other servers, or, like me before I started playing they may have done a ton of research and video watching.

So, I'd say grab it all then filter to see the issues.

The nice thing about a smaller sample is you can ask an open ended question and won't drown in comments.

jasonrohrer · 2019-06-17 23:50:48

I wasn't planning to ask open-ended questions. I need data that is simple for me to parse mentally. So these will all be multiple choice questions.

As a simple example, I'm currently unsure about whether most people like or dislike the life limit.

Thus, why not ask everyone? Why sample?

I literally have the power to force everyone who plays the game to answer the poll, if I want to, right? I mean, I can bake it right into the client.

But yeah, the poll would run for some number of days, pretty much until almost everyone playing during that time had answered.

I will be able to specify the cut-offs per question. So if I'm asking a question that only applies to veteran players, I can set that threshold as I need to. Sometimes I might ask a question that even new players can answer (like, "how'd you hear about the game.")

RedComb · 2019-06-18 00:05:47

When looking at the results of such a poll, I hope you will bear in mind the people who have already quit out of frustration/boredom/whatever other reasons (e.g., Breezeknight, Tarr, myself, etc).

It will come across as pretty disingenuous if you use a poll like this to suggest people support particular features when, in reality, many who would vote against such features have already done so with their feet.

wondible · 2019-06-18 01:12:03

Perhaps it could work similar to the review feature, where it always available. Perhaps the subject of the poll should be visible before clicking into it. Required or not-available could still be put on top of this as needed.

kittykatthegreat · 2019-06-18 01:43:45

RedComb wrote:

When looking at the results of such a poll, I hope you will bear in mind the people who have already quit out of frustration/boredom/whatever other reasons (e.g., Breezeknight, Tarr, myself, etc).
It will come across as pretty disingenuous if you use a poll like this to suggest people support particular features when, in reality, many who would vote against such features have already done so with their feet.

This is something to keep in mind. I haven't really played at all over the last few weeks (once since the life cap). I'm still here in the forums in hopes that an update comes out that makes the game fun for me again.

wondible · 2019-06-18 02:41:23

RedComb wrote:

When looking at the results of such a poll, I hope you will bear in mind the people who have already quit out of frustration/boredom/whatever other reasons (e.g., Breezeknight, Tarr, myself, etc).

You could mention the weekly poll in the update email. Assuming the people who've checked out still read them.

Spoonwood · 2019-06-18 05:46:14

RedComb wrote:

When looking at the results of such a poll, I hope you will bear in mind the people who have already quit out of frustration/boredom/whatever other reasons (e.g., Breezeknight, Tarr, myself, etc).
It will come across as pretty disingenuous if you use a poll like this to suggest people support particular features when, in reality, many who would vote against such features have already done so with their feet.

I agree with this. Especially in light of the choice screen incident where a choice screen got talked about as if it were going to happen by Jason, and then it didn't.

Also, there exist some things which don't really come as best examined with a poll. The suicide baby situation made for a good example of that. Not everyone was suiciding. Really, from what I understand, the people who suggested a solution for babies suiciding were NOT the people who used /die all that much. For example, I think Twisted hasn't used the /die feature much, but he preferred the life token idea as a solution to the problem of baby bones. It would have been better to understand what the people who were /die wanted and go with something to keep them happy (no solutions that I know of would have changed things for players who didn't use /die... players who wouldn't use a choice screen, for example, just wouldn't have to use it) so that they wouldn't /die rather than the ideas of someone who didn't use /die much and thus doesn't understand the motivation as well. The same goes for a poll. The opinions of a majority aren't going to give insight into what a smaller proportion of players wants and what they want could be more of an issue for the game. For example, a poll about how smithing features work, wouldn't get best addressed to the majority, given that the majority of players don't have much experience with smithing or don't care much to do that.

That is NOT to say that players satification doesn't matter. On the contrary, it does matter. It's more that not every part of the game gets understood by everyone and people don't have the same motivations across the board.

Last edited by Spoonwood (2019-06-18 05:47:54)

Saolin · 2019-06-18 16:39:26

I like the idea of having an in-game poll. Internet forums disproportionately draw certain types of people. Some player types are likely not represented much, or not as willing/likely to share their opinion. Gives everyone an equal voice.

Sukallinen · 2019-06-18 17:15:38

Twisted wrote:

Only people who have spent their buffer lives.
Only people who (recently?) used the feature relevant to the question (i.e. if you're asking about crafting axes ask only if they crafted an axe).

-buffer lives get buffed up every now and then (I think latest was to dozens beyond 12) so /die people get advantage. Also some people don't really die so often, so limiting to, say, 10 lives (10 hours) during latest thing'd be kind of awkward. I mean if two days since implementation, 5 hours/day to get into voting pool ?
-if you're born to a town having an advanced item (say, mango trees or newcomen machine) it's unwise for everyone to build one in order to get to voting-pool

I got the image of this being kind of feeling of community-thing, not every new item or such...

Also, for general questions it'd be ok for it to possibly post question upon launching game, so people who quit/took reprieve can vote. After all, they bought the game, for some questions their input is still valid. Maybe post week's question (not whole question, but what kind of things there are up) somewhere, in forums ?

Crayonless · 2019-06-19 10:32:14

If you're going to add an in-game poll it would be a between lives thing, right? A quick question just before you respawn sounds fine, but if it's added to the actual lives, that seems intrusive and phone game-esque. But when it comes to a genuine desire for feedback from the player base, I think that's a fantastic idea, particularly because of the point about the quieter players who have not bothered to post/seek out a forum.

JonySky · 2019-06-19 10:40:39

Good Job Jason!, but ask specific and short questions (no more than 2 lines)
I have been working in the world of teaching for several years and I tell you from experience that people do not read long questions, hopefully they only read the last sentence (it's sad, I know, but it's reality)
Also remember that there are some players that English is not their usual language

Last edited by JonySky (2019-06-19 10:41:20)

Starknight_One · 2019-06-19 11:20:05

The big problem is noise. Many people won't care about the questions and will click a random response just to get back into the game. How do you filter those responses out so they don't drown out the valid responses? Ghu knows, I've given random answers to survey people in the mall, just so they'd stop bugging me.

I agree that this method will probably produce results for you... but I'm not sure that the results will be what you expect, or need, in order to help the game progress. It's probably better than nothing, though.

futurebird · 2019-06-19 13:26:29

Starknight_One wrote:

The big problem is noise. Many people won't care about the questions and will click a random response just to get back into the game. How do you filter those responses out so they don't drown out the valid responses? Ghu knows, I've given random answers to survey people in the mall, just so they'd stop bugging me.

This is one advantage of using a sample over polling the whole population. You get better engagement from the people you do poll since they don't see the poll all the time, it's rare and special so people take the time to read it.

I also think asking open-ended questions is very important. And obviously you'd want a sample for that. Some of the time when I've run polls I've been asking the wrong question and only found out thanks to an open ended question...

More data aren't always better than rich data.

RedComb · 2019-06-19 14:20:03

Starknight_One wrote:

The big problem is noise. Many people won't care about the questions and will click a random response just to get back into the game. How do you filter those responses out so they don't drown out the valid responses? Ghu knows, I've given random answers to survey people in the mall, just so they'd stop bugging me.

I agree, that's why I wrote the following in the other thread:

Finally, every survey question that pops up after a life ends must offer a quick and painless way for people to opt out of the survey without interrupting their play time (to avoid people making random selections just to bypass the question).
https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewt … 139#p65139

I also agree with @futurebird about sampling, and the need to select a good representative sample, and I tried to discuss that as well.

I saw Jason's post and understood it was just modeling how the poll would look and work, but I still thought it was a good moment to discuss issues like sample size and bias.

Funnily enough, I think like 4 other people responded to Jason's mock poll question by critiquing it as well, but only my response warranted a post from @Twisted pointing out Jason's example was a mock up, seemingly dismissing what I had to say. Why he didn't respond in kind to all the other people who pointed out some problems with the mock example, I'm not sure.

All I know is the issues I presented are important regardless of whether or not Jason's example was real and should be considered when making a poll of this nature. I took a good amount of time to write that post (on my phone, no less) and it sucks to have my post singled out like that when I was not the only person who responded to the example question as if it was real.

Feels bad, man.

Last edited by RedComb (2019-06-19 14:23:30)

CatX · 2019-06-19 14:33:26

RedComb wrote:

I took a good amount of time to write that post (on my phone, no less) and it sucks to have my post singled out like that when I was not the only person who responded to the example question as if it was real.
Feels bad, man.

It was a great post, RedComb. Thumbs up.

Hstrike · 2019-06-19 14:52:14

I wouldn't put it during lives. Perhaps during very early baby years, maybe, but it would still take out of the gameplay. Maybe after the death screen? Could also be triggered by the interactions between a player and an item, so you could get relevant ideas from those who interact with some particular subparts of the game - say, for example, hunting.

CatX · 2019-06-19 15:03:28

Haha, maybe Jason could spawn in NPC scribes who walk up to a person and start asking them questions ingame. "Good sir, I can see you have just been stabbed by a knife. Would you consider this to be an a) bad experience, b) fun experience, or c) none of the above?"

Starknight_One · 2019-06-19 19:43:17

All I know is the issues I presented are important regardless of whether or not Jason's example was real and should be considered when making a poll of this nature. I took a good amount of time to write that post (on my phone, no less) and it sucks to have my post singled out like that when I was not the only person who responded to the example question as if it was real.
Feels bad, man.

I thought your post was very insightful, actually, even if the questions in the example were illustrative rather than representative. I just thought that the point about noise vs. data needed to be reinforced.

Twisted · 2019-06-19 21:44:48

RedComb wrote:

Funnily enough, I think like 4 other people responded to Jason's mock poll question by critiquing it as well, but only my response warranted a post from @Twisted pointing out Jason's example was a mock up, seemingly dismissing what I had to say. Why he didn't respond in kind to all the other people who pointed out some problems with the mock example, I'm not sure.

I responded to you as your post was the newest one in the thread. I thought about quoting multiple people but figured it was unnecessary and that it would come off as a bit hostile.

I did not dismiss your points though! I specifically only quoted the part of your post where you called the example poll bad, as that was the only part I was responding to in my reply.

The points you make are good but also potentially unnecessary - if the poll in the post were real, a good detailed reply such as yours would have been great and very helpful - but in response to a simple text test it seemed kind of... reductive? The edited part is great though, no matter the context.

RedComb · 2019-06-19 21:58:50

Twisted wrote:

I responded to you as your post was the newest one in the thread. I thought about quoting multiple people but figured it was unnecessary and that it would come off as a bit hostile.
I did not dismiss your points though! I specifically only quoted the part of your post where you called the example poll bad, as that was the only part I was responding to in my reply.
The points you make are good but also potentially unnecessary - if the poll in the post were real, a good detailed reply such as yours would have been great and very helpful - but in response to a simple text test it seemed kind of... reductive? The edited part is great though, no matter the context.

I get it now. Sorry was too thin-skinned. After the post on Steam about negativity, I've been a lot more on edge about posting anything and people's reaction. Kind of a chilling effect, I guess (except I'm just overly sensitive to how people might take what I'm saying). Thanks for clarifying though and sorry if I misunderstood your response.

Thanks to @CatX and @Starknight_One too for the feedback.

Last edited by RedComb (2019-06-19 21:59:06)

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-06-17 18:43:35

In-game polling feature

#2 2019-06-17 18:52:19

Re: In-game polling feature

#3 2019-06-17 19:01:31

Re: In-game polling feature

#4 2019-06-17 19:04:45

Re: In-game polling feature

#5 2019-06-17 19:10:16

Re: In-game polling feature

#6 2019-06-17 22:27:05

Re: In-game polling feature

#7 2019-06-17 23:50:48

Re: In-game polling feature

#8 2019-06-18 00:05:47

Re: In-game polling feature

#9 2019-06-18 01:12:03

Re: In-game polling feature

#10 2019-06-18 01:43:45

Re: In-game polling feature

#11 2019-06-18 02:41:23

Re: In-game polling feature

#12 2019-06-18 05:46:14

Re: In-game polling feature

#13 2019-06-18 16:39:26

Re: In-game polling feature

#14 2019-06-18 17:15:38

Re: In-game polling feature

#15 2019-06-19 10:32:14

Re: In-game polling feature

#16 2019-06-19 10:40:39

Re: In-game polling feature

#17 2019-06-19 11:20:05

Re: In-game polling feature

#18 2019-06-19 13:26:29

Re: In-game polling feature

#19 2019-06-19 14:20:03

Re: In-game polling feature

#20 2019-06-19 14:33:26

Re: In-game polling feature

#21 2019-06-19 14:52:14

Re: In-game polling feature

#22 2019-06-19 15:03:28

Re: In-game polling feature

#23 2019-06-19 19:43:17

Re: In-game polling feature

#24 2019-06-19 21:44:48

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#25 2019-06-19 21:58:50

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