Polls for new yearly content

The majority in sot is the silent majority.

"direction of the majority" would be like seeing twitter as the majority for a topic. It's a small percent of people that over-represent some issues/preferences.

after they started really rolling with the QoL features they started serving the majority. All the adventure stuff that regs mock is a hit with the majority.

Influencers have a lot of influence with the regs specifically. Lots of people aren't influenced by player communities/content in SoT but the ones that are gonna vote and participate are.

You can really see this when playing the game organically.
Interact with a random player running around an island casually and they are entirely different than fighting a server hopper for example. The person running around a random island (the majority) are completely tuned out of the day to day SoT news. The hoppers are often right out of the twitch channels and discord channels and all that. They have a big impact on the game because of metas/metagaming and all that but they are far from the majority.

Lots of ways to tell. People that just play without following anything outside of the session rarely talk about cheating, they rarely say "broken game" they rarely get into the exaggerations of criticism. Because they aren't reading what others say or hearing what others say and then repeating that.

Talking to someone out of the bubble and someone that is always in the bubble is extremely different in this game. The majority are outside of the bubble.

@thamb0 said in Polls for new yearly content:

@wolfmanbush exactly. Which is why I was saying a main menu poll would be nice. Like not mandatory, but at least very visible on the first screen so a good portion of players could have a say. I get a ton of players who own the game doesn't mean they will even be on to see the poll, but it still would be better than nothing.

Activity data is probably more reliable because people are telling a story with their activity, at least telling what kind of content they enjoy and what kind they don't.

They make/release cool stuff but they often make their cool stuff less cool with the patches after release.

My guess is that activity data leads them in the right direction in development and then social media feedback over-influences the patches of the cool stuff.

Some of the cooler adventure stuff added since season 8 has been heavily criticized in the feedback areas as being insignificant, that's the social media side clashing with organic play because adventurers love that qol little stuff added to the game. Like the rowboat thing as just a random example. I/others look forward to finding new rowboats every session still. That's the kinda stuff that just makes the sessions better.

but people voting is fine, just might not be the most useful data, dunno.

@thamb0 said in Polls for new yearly content:

@wolfmanbush I don't know if I agree though. For instance, I enjoy PVP the most in SoT and wish for something akin to Arena (even though we know it's dead). Alas, I primarily play adventure and mostly just focus on commendation completions, hoping and praying that more PVP centric stuff comes out. I did HG to get both curses, but that was over a year ago, so activity data would show that I like doing voyages and fishing the most right now. Although I don't mind fishing, I do not like Hunter's Call really at all in the current state, I just want the titles. I also think the voyages are getting stale and boring, but I do them to finish comms, and to stay current with the game and because it's the next best thing right now. So data would show one thing, while if I was polled, I would answer another. If polled, I would put most of my emphasis on new PVP content and would be asking for PVP game modes. If the majority answered they wanted Tall Tales over say what I wanted, then at least I can say Rare is doing what the community who voted wants.
This just goes to show that simply asking players in a poll might be eye opening. Yes, we will never get a full answer from every single person that owns the game, but we might be surprised at what content the player base that answers these polls would want.. Or maybe it turns out that they answer closer in line with the activity data you mentioned, that I am sure Rare utilizes. I still think a poll would at the very least just be a fun way to categorize the community and see what percent is interested in what in terms of newer content.

What I am interested in with feedback is how their partner program has shifted, I'm interested in seeing how that pans out.

They've shifted more into the variety market, which gets them feedback from a bit more outside the bubble in some cases.

If they partner with casual variety content creators that are interested in contributing to SoT then they can start getting some good feedback in, that will help balance the same ole same ole system.

They have needed to shake up the network for a very long time and this shift towards variety might help.

I'm for sure not gonna like a lot of that feedback, lol, but at least it might be somewhat fresh feedback getting turned in for a change.

The concern I have is the network takes over people's chats almost immediately lol, so they would need to branch out a lot more often to dilute it more. Once they start repeating all the same ole narratives it's just more of the same.

@thamb0 said in Polls for new yearly content:

@wolfmanbush Interesting. I did not know they were shifting their partner program in that way. Still, any type of polling for the existing player base would be nice to see.. Even if they don't do anything with it besides simply show the numbers of what people like or want.

It's just adding on to it, they are still main game focused. Hopefully it just creates more of a reach and leads to more diverse feedback reaching the devs.

I was thinking it would be neat to add a feedback NPC to taverns where people can leave some form of feedback.

A poll will lead popular people to getting hundreds and even thousands of people to show support for whatever the popular person wants.

A general longer lasting feedback desk in SoT might lead to some solid feedback over time.