Changeover Poll

[Mark Hope]

If, at some later date (it will be more than 4 months from now) I create a Third Changeover Poll, it will have the same questions as this poll.

If you do, please make it a public poll!

 

[Dragon Snack]

It's not necessarily one person doing the vote stuffing themselves. After all, in the RPG.net poll, this poll is mentioned. Did someone mention this poll at WotC or some other pro-4.0 site? Of course people will come over and vote.

Either way, a 45% changeover isn't much to brag about...

 

[Harlekin]

It's a self-selecting poll. It has no meaning other than entertainment.

Sorry, guys. I wish there were some way to get real data here, but it's not feasible. Ultimately, all we could do is get one person to take the list of ENWorld users and run a private poll, carefully worded to avoid bias, and use either a random sample or the entire population (really unlikely, since there are still people that are happy to just read and never create a user-id). That means that if you run a sample, without somehow having information on the actual population number, it's pretty much impossible to develop the type of hyper-accurate research poll that would really be useful for much of anything.

This post brought to you by statistics.

And even after all this hassle, we would only get the distribution for en world users, not for gamers at large. An as we know, en world users are not representative, so the poll would still carry no information about the overall success of 4th edition. There is a reason that role playing companies do next to no market research: It is too expensive.

PS: dd, i din't know you did stats for a living.

 

[Scribble]

Those of you who suspected you wouldn't like anchovies, but tried them anyway (and found your suspicion confirmed), did you eat at least 120 anchovies? Did you try anchovies with various beers or other beverages, to help overcome your biases and preconceptions? If not, well, you didn't really try anchovies, so your opinion certainly doesn't mean anything. Wusses.

I never liked onions. Someone had me try some once on a salad. YUCK. So I never touched them again after that. Till my wife one day said have you ever tried them cooked? Low and behold... I like onions cooked.

I don't like tomatos... I like tomato sauce though, and ketchup.

Also a lot of people like anchovies and they don't even know it. Anchovies are in a lot of stuff. If you like Ceaser Salad dressing... you like anchovies to an extent

 

[Harlekin]

I never liked onions. Someone had me try some once on a salad. YUCK. So I never touched them again after that. Till my wife one day said have you ever tried them cooked? Low and behold... I like onions cooked.

I don't like tomatos... I like tomato sauce though, and ketchup.

Also a lot of people like anchovies and they don't even know it. Anchovies are in a lot of stuff. If you like Ceaser Salad dressing... you like anchovies to an extent

And if we take into account that complicated systems such as RPGs are probably harder to evaluate than a simple taste, it is fair to assume that getting a nuanced understanding of a new RPG system takes a long time.

And that is even before considering the emotional and financial investment one can have in such a hobby, which would further hamper a balanced evaluation.

 

[xechnao]

And if we take into account that complicated systems such as RPGs are probably harder to evaluate than a simple taste, it is fair to assume that getting a nuanced understanding of a new RPG system takes a long time.

This is the art of RPG design: less time to figure out as many things as possible.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And if we take into account that complicated systems such as RPGs are probably harder to evaluate than a simple taste, it is fair to assume that getting a nuanced understanding of a new RPG system takes a long time.

Nahhh, don't think so. Beyond the simple but major dichotomy of cooked vs uncooked, most people aren't going to change an opinion of something they don't like to eat based on eating more of it. After a certain point, all they're doing is torturing their taste buds.

Another one of my major interests is music- I've been involved in music longer than RPGs, and music is at least as complex as RPGs.

I grew up the son of a music teacher, so besides knowing how to use my 4.5 octave voice quite well, I play cello, guitar and bass guitar.

In addition, I own more than 5k CDs, as well as music in other formats, and I've been an Entertainment Attorney for several years and hold a Masters in the marketing of sports and entertainment.

IOW, I really understand music.

I can usually tell if I'm going to like a band within 3 thirty second samples of a band's music, assuming they are representative of their stylistic breadth. (That is not to say I might not like a song here or there, just whether I'd ever consider buying any of their CDs.) In my life, only 3 bands have ever fooled me: Collective Soul, King Diamond and Danzig.

Similarly, if you send in submissions for publication in a fiction magazine, the editor is only going to give you a few pages MAX before he decides whether to read further or send you a "Thank you but no" letter.

RPGs are no different. If you've been in the hobby for decades, you have already formed preferences as to what you do and don't enjoy playing. In all likelyhood, someone who has gamed that long has gone through a system revision or 2, has experience in multiple systems and is aware of changes in the way games are designed. That gamer won't need to- and may not be able to- invest the equivalent of a couple of work-weeks to make a decision about whether they like a game or not.

A simple reading may suffice- it did for me and my friends. Others may need to try running/playing the game. It certainly shouldn't take 120 hours to figure out a game isn't for you.*

* Unless that's how long it takes to get through your first 4Ed combat. Just kidding- there have been so many threads about 4Ed combat grind I couldn't resist.

 

[catsclaw227]

Also you're incorrect... at least from where I sit. You don't need to be logged in to vote. Post- yes you need an account, but not to vote. And everytime you log in / then log back out the system seems to forget about you, so each time you log out you can vote as a guest, log in, the log back out and re-vote as a guest.

This. I tested it earlier and it worked. Note: I voted twice for each "side" to keep it balanced for my testing.

 

[Harlekin]

Nahhh, don't think so. Beyond the simple but major dichotomy of cooked vs uncooked, most people aren't going to change an opinion of something they don't like to eat based on eating more of it. After a certain point, all they're doing is torturing their taste buds.

Another one of my major interests is music- I've been involved in music longer than RPGs, and music is at least as complex as RPGs.

I grew up the son of a music teacher, so besides knowing how to use my 4.5 octave voice quite well, I play cello, guitar and bass guitar.

In addition, I own more than 5k CDs, as well as music in other formats, and I've been an Entertainment Attorney for several years and hold a Masters in the marketing of sports and entertainment.

IOW, I really understand music.

I can usually tell if I'm going to like a band within 3 thirty second samples of a band's music, assuming they are representative of their stylistic breadth. (That is not to say I might not like a song here or there, just whether I'd ever consider buying any of their CDs.) In my life, only 3 bands have ever fooled me: Collective Soul, King Diamond and Danzig.

Similarly, if you send in submissions for publication in a fiction magazine, the editor is only going to give you a few pages MAX before he decides whether to read further or send you a "Thank you but no" letter.

RPGs are no different. If you've been in the hobby for decades, you have already formed preferences as to what you do and don't enjoy playing. In all likelyhood, someone who has gamed that long has gone through a system revision or 2, has experience in multiple systems and is aware of changes in the way games are designed. That gamer won't need to- and may not be able to- invest the equivalent of a couple of work-weeks to make a decision about whether they like a game or not.

A simple reading may suffice- it did for me and my friends. Others may need to try running/playing the game. It certainly shouldn't take 120 hours to figure out a game isn't for you.*

* Unless that's how long it takes to get through your first 4Ed combat. Just kidding- there have been so many threads about 4Ed combat grind I couldn't resist.

Shrug, I've gaming about as long as you and I'm pretty sure you are wrong. I have seen more than one game that read great and played badly and the other way round. If you think you know what a game is like after reading the rule book you are making a decision on very little information and your prior is likely contributing more to the decision than the data you have.

Btw, the same is true in the entertainment models you described. An editor that gets way more than he can publish will read everything with the assumption that it's not publishable. Hence he needs little extra information to to make a decision about rejecting a paper. Furthermore, he does not actually care if he rejects a few quality manuscripts ans long as he does not accept bad stories. (Specificity vs Sensitivity)

 

[catsclaw227]

I can usually tell if I'm going to like a band within 3 thirty second samples of a band's music, assuming they are representative of their stylistic breadth. (That is not to say I might not like a song here or there, just whether I'd ever consider buying any of their CDs.) In my life, only 3 bands have ever fooled me: Collective Soul, King Diamond and Danzig.

You should check out Magic Pie. Their sound is not easy to represent in 30 sec clips, but most prog is like that anyway being that the prog spectrum is pretty wide.