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

[gweinel]

Do the polls give a correct measurment of what the dnd players want? And if not, how can wizard embrace the people who don't answer these polls?

These questions comes to my mind more and more the last weeks. I think that the polls that wizard posts give a distinct measurement of a large part of the people who play dnd but this part is not representative. The current edition of dnd is 4e and so its more natural to have more people who like that edition to attend the forums and blogs (and vote to the polls). If this is true then what is the credit of the polls? What about the ppl that play 3e or older editions? My gaming group plays 3e-4e but noone has ever voted or participated in the forums.

Also, people who play olders editions is more likely to be older than those who play 4e and is more possible to have less time to attend the forums AND play their favorite game due to real life commitments (family, pressure in work, etc). What about these people and what about their voice?

If my above assumptions are true then how wizard will take into account my friends voice for the 5e? Also how creditibility would get when someone gives as evidence these polls? When Mearls said "No one voice can rise above the others, unless it is the voice of D&D fans as a whole" some days ago, how can listen the worries of all the fans?

I post this because i fear that the "silent" (and not always by their choice) players of dnd will not got heard in the following iteration of the game.

 

[Morrus]

Well, one can't listen to the silent by definition. WotC can't overcome a logical impossibility, no matter how much they'd like to.

The public playtests will expand the level of interaction as people play the game with their friends and feed back. Those people in - say - my gaming group who don't really look at the online stuff will get access to the playtest stuff by virtue of me bringing it to the game session, and will comment on it. I'd then feed that back.

But no, there's no magical way to compel the silent to interact. The playtest program sounds like the best way to get it out there as widely as possible. Get it out there to as many as you can, and you've done your part.

 

[Kaodi]

Until the day comes when polling companies know who all the gamers are and can contact them all directly, the likely answer is no. However, the day when they can do just that might, quite disturbingly, be not that far off.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

I think the WOTC polls are indicative of what the dozens of people who play 4e want, but not necessarily what the rest of the world wants.

Mod Note: Ladies and gents, let's not have any more sly digs like this one. Show respect for people who like things you don't, or hold your post, please. Any questions, please take them to e-mail or PM. Thanks. ~Umbran

 

[NewJeffCT]

It all depends on how inclusive the polls are - is WotC's only source of information the polls on their website?

However, I think they're smart enough to realize that people who visit their website are only a certain subset of gamers, and not representative of the average gamer. I know I'm the only person in my gaming group that frequents the enworld or the WotC forums, though I know at least a couple of the group make occasional forays in one place or the other. However, I'm not the one in the group that knows more about the rules than everybody, and never have been. But, I'm only 1 person in 7 in my group that goes online to get gaming info.

Plus, internet polls are notoriously unreliable. I think if WotC wanted a real poll, they'd need to commission a legitimate pollster to do it for them.

 

[P1NBACK]

Of course the polls are heavily 4E-player slanted.

That's why WotC aren't just using their website polls for gathering information. They're also hiring "consultants", especially from OSR figureheads and bloggers. I'm sure they have other avenues of information streams too.

And, once the playtest hits, they'll see the best kind of information hopefully: actual play results.

 

[gweinel]

I think the WOTC polls are indicative of what the dozens of people who play 4e want, but not necessarily what the rest of the world wants.

Exactly this.
However what we have here is actually an advertisment of 4e opinions, since we agreed that the polls are taken mostly from 4e players. So, this is done in porpuse or not? For example lets take the healing surge poll. We see around 75% of the voters to support it. The page will be visited by some thousand ppl and several links from various will get directed to the blog page. The majority of the ppl will be advertised that 3/4 players wants a form of healing surge. Maybe this is really what the most ppl want but this isn't the case right now.

What i am trying to say is that the polls as they are now function as a mechanism which advertises and gives credit to the 4e opinions and this mechanism works against the older edition opinions.

ps. I always wanted to put a similar poll here in enworld for every poll the wizards posts.

 

[Ron]

It is very, very difficult to evaluate what customers want with pools. First of all, Wizards' pools at their site are useless because of the very biased sample of the universe of potential D&D players. Still, they might give some information of what their current customers with a habit of reading their page might want. However, it is well known in marketing you cannot ask direct questions. Not only many people lie, due to some sort of social pressure, but worse, in most cases, customers find difficult to pinpoint what they really want. As such, is not uncommon to create pools where there are a lot of somewhat tangential questions in which the researcher looks later how they are correlated to find out what the customers really think about it. This is very hard to implement and screw ups are kind of common.

That all said, I found relieved with the YouTube's Q&A recently posted by Wizards. Myers seemed to understand the limitations of the pools and said that they suggested that, in some cases, people misunderstood what they want. He gave an example in that many poolers thought they wanted more rules but Wizards' analyses suggested what they actually wanted were more options.

We don't have enough information to analyze their pools or even figure out if they are actually analyzing it right. As such, we can only thrust Myers and his team to be doing the right thing (or not).

 

[gweinel]

It is very, very difficult to evaluate what customers want with pools. First of all, Wizards' pools at their site are useless because of the very biased sample of the universe of potential D&D players. Still, they might give some information of what their current customers with a habit of reading their page might want. However, it is well known in marketing you cannot ask direct questions. Not only many people lie, due to some sort of social pressure, but worse, in most cases, customers find difficult to pinpoint what they really want. As such, is not uncommon to create pools where there are a lot of somewhat tangential questions in which the researcher looks later how they are correlated to find out what the customers really think about it. This is very hard to implement and screw ups are kind of common.

That all said, I found relieved with the YouTube's Q&A recently posted by Wizards. Myers seemed to understand the limitations of the pools and said that they suggested that, in some cases, people misunderstood what they want. He gave an example in that many poolers thought they wanted more rules but Wizards' analyses suggested what they actually wanted were more options.

We don't have enough information to analyze their pools or even figure out if they are actually analyzing it right. As such, we can only thrust Myers and his team to be doing the right thing (or not).

I am sure that the wizard knows exactly what their polls are about and how they work. That's the reason i rised the issue...

 

[ForeverSlayer]

No because their polls are awful. They word the questions and answers in such a way that they sometimes make you choose what may be the closest to your answer but still not your answer so when you are forced to take that answer Wizards thinks that what you want. Close is only good in horseshoes and hand grenades.

They are a joke really.

It's evident that 4th edition wasn't what the majority wanted.