Are the polls a correct measurment of what the dnd players want?

[hafrogman]

Firstly, I am disappointed that this thread isn't a poll.

But as always, no, the internet is a terrible way to get information about anything. All it will do will get you information about the people who use the internet to talk about gaming. On either side of the edition war, on any forum you like, whoever the "majority" claim to be, they don't actually represent a majority of people who actually play the game.

 

[Janaxstrus]

Fairly useless, except to find out what 4e players and the 5% of older edition players who happen to see the polls somewhere else and take part, want.

The people they need to come back in order for 5e to succeed, don't frequent the website anymore. I know I stopped going (and just re-registered yesterday) after they told me how much badwrongfun I was having by playing 3.5 instead of 4e.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

The people they need to come back in order for 5e to succeed, don't frequent the website anymore. I know I stopped going (and just re-registered yesterday) after they told me how much badwrongfun I was having by playing 3.5 instead of 4e.

Yep. I haven't been to WOTC's site since the moneygrab of 3.5 except to follow a link from Enworld briefly.

 

[Iosue]

Mike MearlsDungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (What's With the Polls?)

I thought it would be useful to pause this week and talk a little bit about the polls that have been appearing in this column. Some folks think of them as poorly disguised marketing research. In all honesty, they’re simply an attempt to engage in a dialogue. We already have an entire department here at Wizards of the Coast dedicated to collecting data, running official surveys, and so on. Plus, I also took enough statistics in college to understand that a self-selecting audience is by no means a sound foundation for the sort of polling we’ve been running in Legends & Lore.

Instead, think of this column as something similar to a virtual panel at a convention. It gives me a chance to talk about topics that interest me and, hopefully, you. The polls—and the invitation to send feedback to dndinsider[MENTION=17465]Wizard[/MENTION]s.com—are the Q&A portion of the panel, your chance to react and my chance to pose a question. If you’ve been to a panel held by D&D R&D at any of the major cons, you’ve probably seen us ask how many people in the audience are DMs, how many own a specific sourcebook, and so on. Think of these polls as something like that. It’s interesting to see the answers, but we’re not about to base any major business decisions on them.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=2165]gweinel[/MENTION]
With millions of D&D players and maybe 5,000 responses to a given poll and I think you've got your answer right there. Add to that the poor design of many of the polls, and the self-selected sample set.

It remains interesting for us readers, and may inspire designers of D&D to ask different questions, but it's not the market survey conducted in 1999-2000 that's for sure. IOW I highly doubt decisions are being based on the polls without other extensive market data.

 

[gweinel]

Mike MearlsDungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (What's With the Polls?)

[MENTION=6680772]Iosue[/MENTION]: Thanks for the link. I was not aware of that.
However since wizards agree too that their polls are not valid, i fail to see their practical use. Mearls says that the polls are something like a panel but frankly i can't see how they work that way.

I think at the moment the polls mostly confuse and shape opinions rather the opposite. I hope that isn't done on porpuse.

 

[keterys]

I'm not sure that the polls are being answered primarily by 4e fans. I imagine some of the early ones might have been, but many of the ones I looked at more recently that didn't seem to be the case.

Basically, those with the highest level of interest are responding. In casual observation, that appeared to be those interested in a new edition - which is primarily those playing older editions or people tired of 4e, not active fans of 4e. Obviously, there are some 4e folks posting in an attempt to get 4e further represented, but certainly when an article is discussed or linked to me, it's by my friends who wax nostalgic about 1st edition or vancian and want something less 4e-like, and my friends who like 4e largely don't talk about or respond to them.

But... yeah, I don't see how they'll get much info out of the polls.

 

[Li Shenron]

Polls can be very useful, but at the moment I have serious doubts that current WotC public polls are useful at all... Those polls are way too simple and blunt, and most importantly IMHO you should NEVER ask general questions on a topic after delivering the readers an article about such topic! I don't mean they shouldn't ask "how do you like the proposal I've just written here?", which is fine. I mean asking about existing concepts "should we change this or keep it?" after delivering a speech that clearly skews towards highlighting the bad (or the good) of that concept.

A good questionnaire is simple to understand, unbiased, NOT preceded by any comment (much less a lesson or a rave/rant) but also made up of a good number of questions, and possibly with the added option for comment (which fortunately WotC gives).

You're right to be worried about which people are more likely to answer the polls, but I bet WotC is aware of this... I am quite confident that they won't solely rely on their polls, but they will just use them as complementary feedback together with forums and comments to the articles. IMHO however they shouldn't looking exclusively at their own forums, but also look at those of the most important RPG communities on the web, including those of their competitors.

 

[B.T.]

No, they are not. The polls are an accurate measurement of what a small, vocal contingent of the online D&D community want. And even then, not all of us vote in the polls, so it's even smaller than you might suspect.

However, I suspect that it doesn't much matter what the polls say. Given how Paizo's open playtest functioned, I suspect that the polls exist as a method of appeasing the fanbase. Call me a cynic, but I strongly suspect WotC don't really care about the results of the poll or what the fanbase want. They're more interesting in giving the appearance of openness and compromise in order to woo past D&D players--particularly the disgruntled 3e players such as myself--to their game. The goal is to get us invested in 5e so that we are willing to spend money on the finished product.

It's working, sort of. I'm interested in the open playtest, but from what I've heard, I'm not getting my hopes up.

 

[kevtar]

I find it funny that much of the critique leveled at the validity of WOTC polls is expressed in assertions and assumptions that have no factual basis. Poor polling and speculative commentary: It's a validity-free-infinite-loop!