Is there no official word on the discontent and frustrations experienced by some of the faction poll participants?



I feel like the few of us that are very frustrated have valid points and I was waiting until you got back from the weekend to perhaps speak to it before I made my mind up on future participation.



There are issues. I don't think it was fairly done.

As somebody who hasn't gone through every page of comments on the Poll, could you maybe expand upon what the concerns/issues are?

Korthulhu wrote:
As somebody who hasn't gone through every page of comments on the Poll, could you maybe expand upon what the concerns/issues are?

Most of the concerns stem from the fact that there was very little in terms of culling the selections. Two of the three leaders in the polls have mechanics that probably can't even be implemented into the game (flying/subterranean cities). The last leader is a forum mod, so some people wonder if his position has something to do with his success.



There are also systemic problems with using the forum for this kind of polling. I know a few of my votes, for example, are from people who don't even own the game and registered just to vote for me.



Basically, there's nothing objectively wrong, but it has been very chaotic and messy. It could have been done a lot more cleanly, but Amplitude is a young studio and this kind of thing is difficult even for an established brand to do properly.



So bottom line: The concerns range from the systemic (I started a thread about this) to accusations of bias or padding (which I personally don't feel are significant but some people do).

Correction, Nereids can't apparently expand districts into water, but they can't actually settle on water.



But yeah, they should have at least checked that entries fit the rules <_< There is one user with two ideas on the poll.

Having looked through and participated in the other thread on the issue, I get the gist of the concerns. I guess my main thing is what exactly the OP's concerns are that it would influence him to drop from the community entirely. Just seems kind of unfair to make a thread calling the devs out without explicitly stating what his problem is.

They're pretty obvious in the Poll thread, so I wasn't going to restate them here.



I didn't say I would drop from the community, just that I would no longer participate in any of the G2G stuff anymore.

Well, I'm sorry. I agree there are issues, but I don't think they should make or break the G2G experience for you. =( Apparently polls have been done differently in the past, and a lot of people are agreeing that this go-around seemed less organized than before. I do still think that this poll will get us something good for the game, and the community mods at least have been active in engaging people on what their concerns were. I understand where you're coming from, but I do hope that it doesn't stop you from participating in the future, for what my opinion is worth.

I don't see the problems...



Nobody is forcing your control away from you - You can literally vote on whatever you want. Mod ranks be damned - Hell if anything, I'd be more inclined to vote for a mod suggestion specifically because they've been here for a long time and know what works and doesn't. Calling foul because of their rank alone on suspicion of vote manipulation is just plain silly.



As for mechanics that don't work - People need to keep in mind that no faction will be implemented exactly as the suggestions lay it out. They serve as inspiration and frameworks for the new factions. If mechanics critical to a faction don't work within the confines of the engine, it will either be adjusted drastically or outright disqualified because the tweaking would turn it into something completely different than suggested.



Suck it up and put your vote - If anything complain about your fellow voter, not the choices :P

Mansen wrote:
I don't see the problems...



Nobody is forcing your control away from you - You can literally vote on whatever you want. Mod ranks be damned - Hell if anything, I'd be more inclined to vote for a mod suggestion specifically because they've been here for a long time and know what works and doesn't. Calling foul because of their rank alone on suspicion of vote manipulation is just plain silly.

I don't think anyone accused them of vote manipulation. I think almost everyone, however, would argue that your first item is evidence enough that bias may be affecting the outcome.

I hope Amplitude will remain silence. Just couse someone is unhappy/frustrated it is not a reason to tender him.

lynxlynx wrote:
I hope Amplitude will remain silence. Just couse someone is unhappy/frustrated it is not a reason to tender him.

This is such an asinine post. Why actively hope that someone stays disappointed?

Faust wrote:
This is such an asinine post. Why actively hope that someone stays disappointed?

This is not what i wrote.

Just because someone is disappointed, this is not reason for everyone else to change their plans, and tender him.

Just give them time to experience frustracion, denay, reflection and all that stuff.

lynxlynx wrote:
This is not what i wrote.

Just because someone is disappointed, this is not reason for everyone else to change their plans, and tender him.

Just give them time to experience frustracion, denay, reflection and all that stuff.

Maybe something was lost in translation. It sounds like what you mean is that you think they should give people some time to cool off before they respond? The way you phrased it before sounded like you were hoping they'd ignore this guy completely. lol

I'm not sure as well if any response from devs would actually do any good atm. Sometimes it is better to wait for the dust to settle. I do hope they will reach some conclusions and use them in future but at this point any response on changes is bound to please some people and displease others. IMO whole situation could have been handled better and I'd like some clarification about some "technical" aspects of competition but those wouldn't really change anything unless they allowed everyone to recast their voices which I believe is not possible with this forum. Forcing people to vote again by for example resetting the vote could be as bad. Although I may wish things were different when there is a lot of bad options silence may be the best one.



We also shouldn't forget that this is THEIR game and their vision we were invited to be part of that to make it better not to take away their toys and tell them how their game should work Despite some disappointments I still believe EL will be great game. And If I really want the game to fit my vision perfectly I always can try becoming developer myself . However; even the creative director Romain have said he not always get to have final say as he works with a team of people as well ^^



In the end if you get really involved with a project like this some disappointments are unavoidable. We really should take step back and accept that. I may disagree with how this competition looks like but the fact is one of 8 factions will be co-created by community and that is pretty amazing.

Wredniak2003 wrote:
~Lots of sensible things~

Y'all should listen to this dude (lady? sorry.) What's done is done, and not everything was optimal. Certainly it has struck a negative chord with a lot of people, and they deserve to have their concerns heard and recognized. But this also isn't the end of the world. The devs are a lot of cool people who are doing something really amazing in how they read posts and interact with members on this forum, and the extent to which they allow us to influence what they do with their games. Obviously they're not perfect and can't anticipate everything, they're only human. The poll is still going, and the issues it raised will likely remain contentious. Ultimately though, it's best to use this as a learning experience and apply fixes to the later stages of this competition and any potential competitions in future. Just take a step back and cool down a bit. We all care about this game and are pretty passionate about it, otherwise we wouldn't be here posting incessantly on our own time. But I think it would be best to take that passion and use it in a positive, constructive manner. It's a cool thing going here, and we shouldn't allow one bump in the road to balls it up.

Ten characters.

K__ wrote:
I'd be interested in seeing what the poll would look like if you culled all of the entries that clearly did not follow the format of what was requested. The number of entries that included more than the background and gameplay idea is probably at the 90% mark.

What would be "more than background and gameplay idea" that would have been against the stated rules? There's 2 or 3 entries also stating units and cities for Quest 2 and 3, explicitly, and I do believe people shouldn't have gone into detail on those, as that is clearly the subject of the next rounds, but there was no clause preventing them from doing so. Or any clause giving an upper limit on characters used.



There's the two entries by lynxlynx that are clearly against the rules (18 & 77), but otherwise, it's only a different story if you'd thrown out everything that didn't have a minor faction mechanic at all. Those would be roughly 15 entries. If you were even stricter and talking about an entry needing a minor faction as a main mechanic, it might be up to 25 that'd need to be thrown out.



I'm not sure what your criteria for throwing out 90% of all entries would be, at least with the rules set by the devs in mind, in their current wording.

Faust wrote:
Most of the concerns stem from the fact that there was very little in terms of culling the selections. Two of the three leaders in the polls have mechanics that probably can't even be implemented into the game (flying/subterranean cities). The last leader is a forum mod, so some people wonder if his position has something to do with his success.



There are also systemic problems with using the forum for this kind of polling. I know a few of my votes, for example, are from people who don't even own the game and registered just to vote for me.



Basically, there's nothing objectively wrong, but it has been very chaotic and messy. It could have been done a lot more cleanly, but Amplitude is a young studio and this kind of thing is difficult even for an established brand to do properly.



So bottom line: The concerns range from the systemic (I started a thread about this) to accusations of bias or padding (which I personally don't feel are significant but some people do).

^This

I'm not going to throw out names, but it definitely seems like some people have more votes than they really should have

I'd be interested in seeing a list of names of who voted for who.

Is there a way for Devs to see IP addresses on accounts? If there are multiple accounts with the same IP voting for someone, that's clear abuse.

Mordius wrote:
^This

I'm not going to throw out names, but it definitely seems like some people have more votes than they really should have

I'd be interested in seeing a list of names of who voted for who.

Is there a way for Devs to see IP addresses on accounts? If there are multiple accounts with the same IP voting for someone, that's clear abuse.

Yes, there is. And as Devs have been around the admin control center of the forum regularly, these last few days, I do believe, they are checking it. I cannot know or confirm that for sure, though.

TBH In the future I'd restrict voting to people having 300 G2G points or maybe 2 week old accounts? Imo that would help reducing any potential abuse and would also negate need to discuss if the voting was manipulated.