I actually agree with that, I just wanted to point out that the fact that Veronica is completely new user doesn't really prove much since first and last choices are the ones that most people will read. I actually agree with keywords thing, if last entry had been about... I don't know, drug using caterpillars then I doubt it'd have gotten as much votes even though it was last one.



This is also why it'd be nice to see poll statistic. It would allow us to see what voters who voted nereids also voted. Like, did they vote only water based factions, or did they vote first few choices along them, etc. I'd like to know if people who voted my idea also voted other minor faction alliance ideas or if they voted "stealthy" ideas like maskari. Or if they all just voted reptilians.

ResonanceMask wrote:
In case of you and Veronica, you had literally first and last one in the poll and that is psychologically proven to be thing were people tend to do that first or last option thing.

Which would not mean the 100% of their votes. Or most.



Should we skip the Quest 2 once the voting list is generated and concede to first and last entries?



I'd bet money that more than a few voted based on keywords. Some may react to religion. Other to amazons. Same as others may avoid humanoids for being too cliché. There is never only one factor to consider. Like some people in the late stages of the voting, voting mostly for the leading ones as to not waste their votes?

Nosferatiel wrote:
I'd like this idea, if there was a chance to edit things up to the day of contest. Have s.th. like a bound hidden submission, then close it and make it uneditable, automatically, at the onset of the contest. I'd do that out of the personal experience that a forum can have hiccups, you can miss spelling errors and you will change your mind after early submission in a week and change or add important stuff during the course of the week.

It also deprives the community of the chance to preread the factions at any given time.







If I were paid by Amplitude, I'd totally agree that I shouldn't participate in the contest. I'm sacrificing some of my free time, here, to police the forum, give advice and/or bring myself in about gameplay matters, like this faction contest. As Amplitude originally made the most active community-members moderators, it'd have been very unfair to say: "Can you be moderators, please? You'll just be deprived of the right to participate in any contests for helping us so much. Thx." XD





The sheer number of entries would have guaranteed that this is a problem, no matter how it is handled, unless there had been a preselection down to a manageable size. As a contestant, myself, I took care not to do any selection whatsoever on any participant. That'd have been unfair to the extreme. The devs, if anyone, should have done that.







#1: Cultists of the Eternal End - Nosferatiel (22183 XP & moderator)

#2: Star Dreamers - Lynx_Gnt (295 XP)

#3: The Nereides - Veronica (1395 XP)



Popularity will help, for sure, but it doesn't seem to be the dominant driving mechanism.

In case of you and Veronica, you had literally first and last one in the poll and that is psychologically proven to be thing were people tend to do that first or last option thing.



With Star Dreamers, I have no idea. They suddenly got like 19 during hour or two or three. I don't remember how fast it was. Either way, that happened during one day. Thats bigger growth than any other entry, they usually get like one in few hours per day. Previously Mesaima was the third and they had same type of stable growth rate as every other winner, so I don't know if user's notability affects it or not.



Ya know, all this talk about how voting psychology works and whether user's popularity and whether they are first or last is kinda hard to discuss since we don't actually see how fast the ideas gained votes <_< In fact I'm gonna make a thread about that if devs could make competition statistics public It'd be cool also for personal reasons to see how my idea gained votes...

I understand the community moderators aren't official, paid members of the Amplitude staff. But like, they do have power on these forums and represent Amplitude to some degree as the frontmen/"police" here in the community. I'd hope that the causes for that concern are at least understood, even if you don't believe that they should be barred from entering these contests. It's a gray area in terms of power and popularity dynamics, and it's why most companies try to head it off and not allow it to become an issue in the first place. I don't think anything in this poll was intentionally done to favor anyone in those ways, but it is something that should be seriously considered and discussed, especially as these forums and Amplitude's fanbase grow.



That said, the format for this contest definitely has some issues either way. As others have pointed out, the most glaring one is the very large number of options and the barrier to entry that is caused by the sheer amount of information a person has to read in order to be well informed about the choice they're making. It probably could have been organized better, but right now I believe the game will still get a compelling, fun to play faction out of the whole ordeal.

Faust wrote:
1. A poll is nothing but a popularity contest. This is pretty evident by the fact that submissions by prominent forum members are almost all doing well

Define well? If it's just "top in the charts", isn't only one mod up there? If it means more than 3 or 4 votes, yeah, lots of people are doing well. You don't need mods to define polls as popularity contests.



The voting system issue is complex. I have no issues with mods, who happen to be just fans, to take part. Pre-filtering the entries would also be nice and reduce some complains, avoiding possible scenarios of the winner not being doable or requiring extra surgery. Private vote (no matter the style) is a must have if you pretend to obtain some serious and (more) honest results.



I'm quite sure that the devs are learning from the experience and adapt from it.

+1 to what adder and melkathi said.





I liked it better when it was the devs selecting a few entries they liked most and putting them on G2G. Because of this, noone had to worry if something is technically doable or not, or if something fits the game or not (which are the primary concerns for a lot of people in the current pre-G2G vote). We would know that entries selected by the devs are fine and there's that (I don't remember if that's how the last faction competition was handled though)



I guess that with the rise of Amplitude's popularity and more people visitng these forums and posting submissions, this is no longer a viable strategy because it requires too much work. But I honestly believe that for the good of the game devs should stick to the old system even if it takes more time from them. Reading 99 entries is a bit hardcore but I was able to do it in a few hours.

Of course, I did it during my free time and I wouldn't want the devs to work overtime But in future competitions they could limit the entries a bit or (preferably) let people write as much as they want but force them to add a short (~100 words max) summary for the devs. If devs are interested by the summary then they can read the longer version of the entry and see if they want to let it enter G2G.





BTW Instant run-off voting system, as awesome as it is, probably wouldn't fix the issues we're currently having in the poll.

I was thinking about the issue you raise about mods not being allowed to participate in many events hosted by other companies. I certainly understand why they do it. But as you say yourself, exclusion is not a nice thing. Especially in communities like this one, where moderators are simple fans themselves. Excluing them would be a rather harsh slap in the face "Sorry, you like our games too much to make suggestions"



On the whole, I agree with you and fully understand the spirit in which you made the thread.

Faust wrote:
1. A poll is nothing but a popularity contest.

One could, the next time, let people enter the contest by filling in a sort of 'contact-form' but then with the content for the competition. And then let the entries by randomly put in a vote, without the names of the creators. This way the only thing some people will know is what faction/design/... they made, and you eliminate the voting for a person, rather then for his idea.



You could this also randomize the order every time a vote is made, so that the people at the first and last place don't get an advantage.

lynxlynx wrote:
This is why you ask community primary for lore and names, leaving number tweaking off their shoulders.

How bad it could be?

It seems that Cultists are winning. So we have some faction with religious theme, possibly single city but client state empire, bonuses to religion, and rebelion mechanic, and army of many mnor faction.

In civ5 it will be mix Byzantine with Venecia. And in fantasy world fits just fine.

Not just cultists, cultists with run down robot servants You forgot the awesome part.



Anyway, when I checked through old g2g votes, I noticed that during design competitions(whether its race or item or whatever) a lot of users are same on everyone meaning that one or two or three people are on g2g almost every time. But can't that be because they make good proposals instead of it being because they are more notable posters that majority of others?

lynxlynx wrote:
This is why you ask community primary for lore and names, leaving number tweaking off their shoulders.

How bad it could be?

It seems that Cultists are winning. So we have some faction with religious theme, possibly single city but client state empire, bonuses to religion, and rebelion mechanic, and army of many mnor faction.

In civ5 it will be mix Byzantine with Venecia. And in fantasy world fits just fine.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. This thread isn't about who is winning, it's about how to improve this experience for everyone next time.

This is why you ask community primary for lore and names, leaving number tweaking off their shoulders.

How bad it could be?

It seems that Cultists are winning. So we have some faction with religious theme, possibly single city but client state empire, bonuses to religion, and rebelion mechanic, and army of many mnor faction.

In civ5 it will be mix Byzantine with Venecia. And in fantasy world fits just fine.

+1 for the OP



I dont like this voting system at all, as it is popularity based. If I have 1000+ FB or any gaming site friends, I advertise for them to register quickly and vote for my idea without even reading through it or playing the game at all.

I am not questioning the quality of the leading ideas at all, I just think this method of voting is wrong on many levels. (Although I voted now, read the top 9-10 ideas, but hardly found 3 options to vote for, as most of the ideas do not give any level of depth to the gameplay (this is very subjective, only my personal opinion)).



I also support that DEVs should narrow the choices down, as reading through 99 entries is impossible for the majority.

For example the DEVs should have narrowed it down to 10 (or even 3) ideas, from where the community could have voted based on G2G votes (giving substantial penalty for newcomers who only register to vote for a friends's entry).

Korthulhu wrote:
Your argument seriously boils down to "people are just too dumb to know what is actually good."

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?

VieuxChat wrote:




And "objective" means "not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations". Don't you find really easy to point out good things from Nos' entry without being influenced by personnal feelings or interpretations ? .

Normative statements are never objective. Objectivism can only analyze what something is or does, not whether or not its good. So no, even though I find Nos' entire entry to be good (the best of the top 3 imo), that analysis is completely and totally influenced by my feelings and interpretations. But that's the beauty of it

I rather believe VieuxChat is trying to make the general statement: "No one can know how it plays out without having played the finished product.", to which I agree with Korthulhu insofar as the argument is void, as we can't take a glimpse into the future and play it before realising it.

Even the flavour of the argument to state that the devs are more likely to have a better predictive power in the outcome of implementing a faction isn't relevant here, unless we were discussing whether there should be votes, at all, or the devs should just choose.



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]

would reduce systematic biases in the votes, themselves, to different degrees.

A randomized order of entries would remove biases due to the order of entries.

Despite anonymous votes, there'd still be the chance of campaigning for votes, because you can as well tell people "I'm x and I've written the faction y, vote for me!", making anonymous submissions only reduce bias by name popularity effects as far as one has from just seeing name and rank.

Owning the game being prerequisite to voting would reduce the viability of cheating by repeated registration with different e-mail-addresses, because you'd effectively pay for each vote. Millionaires might still be able to buy votes, that way, though. Just in theory.

Everyone being blinded to the vote result would be the most important point, as it removes strategic voting, unless anyone makes some extrapolations on asking people what they voted for.



So I do agree with these four points, but I'd like you to keep in mind that the devs may have roughly 35 people in their studio, out of which, to my knowledge, not a single one is versed in forum code scripting. Like with any other fanmade code, they previously took into account, they have to actually understand each part, because it will be employed in their name. Legally, that makes them responsible for anything the code does as long as they make use of it. This might just be the reason why they're generally reluctant to do anything to the forum. They might simply not be capable to do so.



I'd really like there to be a forum coder dev or for us to have more than just the barebones functionalities, especially for polls, we have in this forum, but we cannot do more than ask for it.

Korthulhu wrote:
Nobody else is even arguing the quality of any of the submissions, what's being argued is the methodology of the contest.

I'm gonna have to +1 this part, Vieux, I honestly have no idea why we're suddenly discussing Nos right now This thread was created because plenty of people thought that the system devs used to pick the 3 facitons that make it to G2G had lots of problems and we're trying to analyze them to avoid similar concerns in the future. These concerns may be related to community's uncertainty if certain entries are even implementable in EL, or if other entries break the rules or not, etc.

However, it does seem like most of us agree that devs picking 3 factions for G2G vote by themselves would've been a FAR better idea. No confusion. No invalid entries.

VieuxChat wrote:
The problem with the G2G thing is that people don't know why they vote. Would the faction with the most vote automatically be the most interesting to play ?

How could you know it would be such a fun to play with BL for instance ?

At first devs tried to get rid of food, then reused food with them.

I argued with them that they would be a lot more cool to play if everything goes big or goes home.



The "real" problem is that too few people really know what would be "really" cool to play.

I think that's why the contest itself required an actual gameplay mechanic? No one can know how well something will play, but it's easy to look at three factions with three core mechanics, and say "This one is the one I would like to see in the game". Or to say "I want amplitude to explore THIS mechanic". What is the problem with that?

Your argument seriously boils down to "people are just too dumb to know what is actually good." Again, nobody else was even arguing the quality of any submissions.

A good methodology should let the "best" idea come first.

That vote "could have been" flawed.



And "objective" means "not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations". Don't you find really easy to point out good things from Nos' entry without being influenced by personnal feelings or interpretations ? For instance the way the lore is used, or the feasibility of the idea. Or simply how the gameplay systems just are used together ?

The strange thing is that I know I wouldn't like playing such a faction nor playing against. "That" is influenced by personnal feelings.



And, for me, the flaw number one of such competition is the fact that people don't have a clue at what would "really" be fun to play.

VieuxChat wrote:
So. No. Nos' is "objectively" winning because his ideas is one of the best.

You keep using that word. A qualitative statement is not and can not be objective. Saying that the entry with the most votes is first in the poll is an objective statement. It accurately represents observable reality. Saying it is winning because it is one of the best ideas is a qualitative, not objective, observation. It's a pure matter of opinion. It's also not a good argument. Others have pointed out that there are a lot of variables, conscious and subconscious, that go into these things. The quality of a submission is one of those variables, and one of the stronger if not strongest ones, but it's not the only one. Nobody else is even arguing the quality of any of the submissions, what's being argued is the methodology of the contest.

The problem with the G2G thing is that people don't know why they vote. Would the faction with the most vote automatically be the most interesting to play ?

How could you know it would be such a fun to play with BL for instance ?

At first devs tried to get rid of food, then reused food with them.

I argued with them that they would be a lot more cool to play if everything goes big or goes home.



The "real" problem is that too few people really know what would be "really" cool to play.