Korthulhu wrote:
The requirements that Nos proposed all seem like good solutions for the issues that have been aired. I don't know that I agree with also requiring a certain amount of posts or time to be able to vote. If a person has paid for the game, I think that's enough to say that they have a stake in its future.



I brought up the point that it was difficult for the vote to be an informed one in my first post in this thread. There really are just tons of entries. Ideally a person would go through and read the descriptions on all of them, but the sheer number does create a wall for a majority of people. Yeah, the time sink is maybe only a few hours at most, but unfortunately that's enough to dissuade a lot of people. Voting brackets over a longer period of time would probably do a lot to get more people actively looking into contest entries.

I meant those two as alternative for buying game, not that if you have bought the game you can't vote because of it. I mean, some people are genuinely interested or have been in forum for long time, but just haven't gotten the game yet because of money problems or something. But I do have to admit that requiring them to just buy the game is simplest. After all, g2g votes are based on whether you have bought the games and gained points from that.

VieuxChat wrote:
To the defence of the dev, I really think they didn't thought there would be so many entries.

EDIT: Hum... the last faction creation compettion had 70ish entries. That's not so far away from th e99 entries we have (even if one of them should be removed because the author proposed 2 entries).

<_< So yeah. Besides, they had few days to think about it when they noticed incredible amount of entries. We had 40 in about two days.

Wredniak2003 wrote:
*snip*

I'm currently pretty close with Panczasu on 4th and 5th place and I think I will be rather disappointed if the faction that beats us will not be possible to implement fully (especially the floating cities as imo that is this faction "selling point"). I clearly thing devs should have read the list and cross off those factions that in their opinion would require extensive changes to work. Even If that meant delaying the vote by couple days or even a week. *snap*

If the faction would be deemed impossible to implement, number four would simply end up the the top three, or 5 if 4 is also not implementable, or... well you get the point.

TBH I'm not going to discuss how I view the current methods for this contest. My idea is doing rather well but the closer it gets the bitter I can potentially become about whole thing. I'm only human and I clearly believe my idea is probably the best ^^" I obviously lack the objectivity needed to be proper judge of that so I try to stay away from such discussions as much as possible to avoid situations when I may come across too strong.



I'm currently pretty close with Panczasu on 4th and 5th place and I think I will be rather disappointed if the faction that beats us will not be possible to implement fully (especially the floating cities as imo that is this faction "selling point"). I clearly thing devs should have read the list and cross off those factions that in their opinion would require extensive changes to work. Even If that meant delaying the vote by couple days or even a week.



But let's leave the current mechanics alone and let's focus on g2g mechanic which IMO is much more FLAWED.

3 way vote imo is not the way here. Look at the current vote with ettin, haunt an sister of mercy. There were a lot of people that just hated the idea of sisters but because our votes got split on ettin and haunt sisters are (or was) leading. IMO the devs should have picked only 2 faction and made it 1vs1 or pick 4 factions and make it 2x 1v1 with both winners facing off at the "final" vote. I strongly believe with 3 factions there is good chance a vote can be split and the faction that wins will not be majority favorite. IMO that would be worst; to end with winner that majority of community is displeased.



(I acknowledge that there is no way to please everyone that are just my thought on the situation).



EDIT: Limit to 300 letters??? Really I have given longer assignments to first graders that just started learning English... I could probably write one sentence containing 300 characters. And I believe my entry was at least 12000 letters ^^" Imagine cutting that down... Hell the name of my faction is 18 letters alone... I can understand need for shor summary but don't make it 2 sentences long...

Shall we request this competition to be restarted and postponed until the other factions are implemented to EL then?

There is also that if there isn't word limit, then that encourages everyone to write a lot of text My original entry was actually one sentence on lore and few sentences on gameplay, but I felt that since everyone was writing long texts that perhaps I should as well...

Adding some more structure to the entries themselves actually wouldn't be the worst thing. I could definitely see it helping in getting everybody on the same page for a contest (since there seem to be some concerns about entries not fitting the criteria) along with making it a bit easier for voters to wade through and read them all.

VieuxChat wrote:
Or each entry could be limited to 300 letters.

True.



Maybe specify more exactly what the entry needs, like:

• Give a Title
• Add the proper keywords that define your faction (max X keywords)
• Background summary (max X words)
• Gameplay idea (max X words)
• Optional: wall of text with all the stuff not in the above that you want to talk about, pics included.
  
  

Considering that Quest 2 is about Hero, 3 units and something about city (not really sure about what it entails exactly), I wonder how the poll options would be titled and if they should give guidelines about how to present the info to make it more readable.

Yeah, I have to admit you are right about that. Besides, its not like this is public voting anyway, the worth of votes in g2g is decided by amount of points we have, so might as well cut spammers from forum poll and require them to own the game as well.

ResonanceMask wrote:
Edit: Whelp, my attention span is limited it seems



Anyway, as alternative to owning the game, you could require votes to have certain amount of posts or forum activity instead. Not many people would bother to do 10 posts just to vote for someone they know and certainly not in masse..

I think this would not be a good idea, since there are more then enough people not owning EL that have more then 10 posts. And they don't know how the game feels, thus can't judge what faction would fit into the game (yes, just liking the lore isn't enough in my eyes, gameplay and feasibility matter aswell.). And theoretically you could still end up with 10-post spammer accounts, Which i dislike.

adder wrote:
If the faction would be deemed impossible to implement, number four would simply end up the the top three, or 5 if 4 is also not implementable, or... well you get the point.

Ah, but what would really mean impossible to implement? All those factions will be modified to fit the game. Many of us wonders if for example converting moving floating castle to normal city with some nice flatting graphics and defense bonus would be exactly that "modification" (I'm feeling pretty bad for Star Dreamers creator, we are pretty negative about his faction ^^"). That would certainly change that faction to implementable but how many people would vote on it if they knew that there will be no such castles. I admit this is just pure speculation on our part at the moment that would be possible ot avoid if devs took some time too look through submissions. Or for example if my faction instead of no production/food used for building was changed to bonus to food and penalty to production I'm really not sure if even I would vote for it (ok, I would because how often you play the sentient plants but you get my point).

To the defence of the dev, I really think they didn't thought there would be so many entries.

EDIT: Hum... the last faction creation compettion had 70ish entries. That's not so far away from th e99 entries we have (even if one of them should be removed because the author proposed 2 entries).

Aww, dang it, I seem to be having concentration problems right now D:



But yeah, I'm surprised that devs didn't think of that in first place =/ I mean, dumbing all into one big poll is just so amateurish. The community feedback aspect is big advertised part of Endless games so it feels so weird that first forum poll I encounter is so... Rushed.

The requirements that Nos proposed all seem like good solutions for the issues that have been aired. I don't know that I agree with also requiring a certain amount of posts or time to be able to vote. If a person has paid for the game, I think that's enough to say that they have a stake in its future.



I brought up the point that it was difficult for the vote to be an informed one in my first post in this thread. There really are just tons of entries. Ideally a person would go through and read the descriptions on all of them, but the sheer number does create a wall for a majority of people. Yeah, the time sink is maybe only a few hours at most, but unfortunately that's enough to dissuade a lot of people. Voting brackets over a longer period of time would probably do a lot to get more people actively looking into contest entries.

Wintersong wrote:
Not all the 99 were walls of text. And they were given along a determind period of time, not suddenly. Even for those who knew about the poll as it started, the poll lasts more than enough days to slowly read the entries. You can reduce time from reading other forum posts to read the entries too.



Don't get me wrong, 99 entries are a lot. Poor Nosferatiel had it worse. Not only read them but to categorize them.

Or each entry could be limited to 300 letters.

ResonanceMask wrote:








Few people did suggest as alternative for this poll and insta run off voting could have been bracket voting where entries are put into brackets of ten and each winner of those brackets would go to next vote where the winners would then go to g2g, but nobody has commented on that either =/ That would have been way to cut down overwhelmingess of votes and allow everyone have fair chance.

I referenced this method, which was used for the last Faction Creation Competition, a little earlier in the thread:

Stealth_Hawk wrote:






But I am just left to wonder why the devs didn't do this poll like the last faction competition: Brackets of polls. It wasn't perfect, but it was allot more balanced than this.

Unfortunately, as you said, no one really talked about it before the poll opened. I assume this is because all of us expected it would just be run the same way as the other one was

Stealth_Hawk wrote:
No, I think Vieux is saying people are too apathetic to inform themselves about which entries they would actually like to play. No one is calling any one else stupid here I don't think lol



But that leads to another question: when 99 walls of text are heaped on us all at once, is it within the realm of reason to expect everybody to find the faction they like?

Not all the 99 were walls of text. And they were given along a determind period of time, not suddenly. Even for those who knew about the poll as it started, the poll lasts more than enough days to slowly read the entries. You can reduce time from reading other forum posts to read the entries too.



Don't get me wrong, 99 entries are a lot. Poor Nosferatiel had it worse. Not only read them but to categorize them.

Nosferatiel wrote:




That said, I agree for polls that implementing:

[LIST=1]

individually randomized order of entries per voter

anonymous submission

owning the game being prerequisite to voting

everyone being blinded to the result of the vote, until the result is final

[/LIST]

Edit: Whelp, my attention span is limited it seems



Anyway, as alternative to owning the game, you could require votes to have certain amount of posts or forum activity instead. Not many people would bother to do 10 posts just to vote for someone they know and certainly not in masse..

Stealth_Hawk wrote:
But that leads to another question: when 99 walls of text are heaped on us all at once, is it within the realm of reason to expect everybody to find the faction they like?

Few people did suggest as alternative for this poll and insta run off voting could have been bracket voting where entries are put into brackets of ten and each winner of those brackets would go to next vote where the winners would then go to g2g, but nobody has commented on that either =/ That would have been way to cut down overwhelmingess of votes and allow everyone have fair chance.

Ettin and Haunt combined have 2,073,230 points, while Sister of Mercy has 1,900,050 points. The two monsters races apparently have more votes combined, but only barely (173,180 points.) I'm not sure if that says anything about vote splitting because there were two monster races versus a humanoid one, but it certainly doesn't support your assertion that "combined losing factions will probably have at least half more votes than the winning one." I also think it's kind of a petty blow to reduce choosing the Sister of Mercy to "pretty woman with breasts in armor." Anecdotal, but I know that's certainly not why my friend voted for the Sister. I'm not really getting your ire over this vote in particular or how this isn't producing a fair result, and I don't see where the case is to change the G2G voting system because of this one instance.

1. individually randomized order of entries per voter

2. anonymous submission

3. owning the game being prerequisite to voting

4. everyone being blinded to the result of the vote, until the result is final

PANCZASU wrote:
This is exactly what I expected but I fear that a final result of a difficult to implement faction may still turn out to be entirely different then what people voted for. Or it may not but even the uncertainty of that is enough to make a lot of people vote differently just because they want to avoid voting for "risky" ideas.



I would be so much happier if the devs handpicked the 3 entries to put in G2G. Or at least picked 10 submissions they liked most and create a much more manageable poll that everyone would read (except the most biased/laziest of forum members). And even then, that polls should still have all the features that Nos mentioned before:



Also, a short summary with a word limit should be a must for every entry in any future competition. Let people write as much as they want but force them to provide the potential readers with a shortened version of their work.

sry to say that but nothing of that would solve a single problem. Then i would even prefer status quo.

MysteryOne wrote:
Let's not forget: arrange entries in alphabetical order.

Um, no. Alphabetical order has the same downsides as any other sorting system - it simply encourages people to have entries that start with "a", "z" or even "aa".

individually randomized order of entries per voter

This is what we want instead. Have the order of the entries completely randomized and displayed differently to each voter, which would help mitigate the first/last entry bias.

Sadly, the odds of such system being implemented are probably fairly low.