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You can access the Final Report, a copy of the survey, and the cleaned dataset for the survey here.
Please feel free to leave any and all constructive comments below! I would appreciate any feedback on the format of the data presentation, in particular, as I am experimenting with a new form. Any observations or analysis that you feel I may have left out is also welcome.
Thank you to everyone who participated and helped out with assembling the survey!
Key Findings
The Economy is the most important aspect of the game to most respondents, but not a majority of respondents. PvE and PvP effectively tied for last in terms of importance. Of the Monk, Ranger and Druid classes, Monks are the least wanted (19% of respondents prioritized it over Ranger or Druid). The majority of respondents would be happy to have a partially implemented Druid or Ranger without Animal Companion tech.
The crowdforging process is working. No one said Goblinworks is not responsive to player feedback. Most respondents said Goblinworks is “responsive” or “very responsive.” A handful of respondents said they felt their voice was not being heard. The chief complaint here is that the community has a few highly vocal, dominant voices that drown out or deter others from participating. Respondents would like to see more surveys in the future.
The respondents are primarily representative of the highly active and highly attentive fans of PFO. They constitute a very small minority compared to the number of individuals that are interested in PFO.
Goblinworks staff received an average 4.2 out of 5 in terms of how Goblin Balls Awesome they are. That’s 4.2 Goblin Balls, yall. That’s a pair of very happy male goblins (and maybe a couple of very happy goblin wives, too!).
Goblin Squad Member
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The chief complaint here is that the community has a few highly vocal, dominant voices that drown out or deter others from participating.
If all it takes to keep someone silent (on the internet) is a dominant voice, then it is likely a good thing they remain silent. There is no room for the timid in Crowd Forging. ;-)
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Everyone's voice is needed in crowdforging. Yes, even the people who aren't part of the target market. Even the people who don't feel like reading... how many words long is the collected Goblinworks' blog?
Well, not everyone. The people actively toxic to the community and overtly violent towards other people have their place, but it isn't in this community.
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One of the heartening things I like about this community is that I think we will be able to come to a consensus about how best to approach encouraging timid folks while keeping our own character defects in check. I also think it is a multifaceted issue, though, such that not all the blame is to be placed on the few vocal. The boards will always be the boards (Bluddwolf and Andius will always be Bluddwolf and Andius). Participating here will always require a certain degree of having, for lack of a better phrase, a backbone.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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That Cheatle was listed as an information source suggests that he is a highly valuable but under appreciated resource to the community. His personalcontact information should be made available in all Newbie packs as well as on the Paizo boards and in Goblin Work’s “Contact Us” Page. I’m sure Cheatle won’t mind if this is done without his express permission.
I'm pretty sure his home address is either the TSV Teamspeak or the COTP Mumble server...
On topic: A statistically significant number of people reported that they felt excluded from the community due to clique formation. (This is different from the concern that certain voices dominate). It would likely improve PFO if we as a community made a concerted effort to make new members of the community not feel like outsiders, and to lower the learning curve for new community members. Does anyone have ideas for how to implement that, or insight into exactly what factors caused someone to feel discluded from a closed group?
On topic: A statistically significant number of people reported that they felt excluded from the community due to clique formation. (This is different from the concern that certain voices dominate). It would likely improve PFO if we as a community made a concerted effort to make new members of the community not feel like outsiders, and to lower the learning curve for new community members. Does anyone have ideas for how to implement that, or insight into exactly what factors caused someone to feel discluded from a closed group?
Clique formation and voices dominating often were in the same comment. Comments expressing multiple ideas often got split up.
More importantly, I think the specific topic of the Paizo PFO Forum Community should be given a dedicated thread. That thread should also have a dedicated moderator to help ensure it stays on topic. That moderator should also be someone who can maintain a degree of cool and neutrality and who is respected in the community. I could do it; but I doubt I would pass the second test.
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TEO and TSV casting anyone who disagrees with them as "toxic" and pretending to have the monopoly on "meaningful" gameplay might be a contributing factor to a culture of exclusion.
I wrote a response to this but I deleted it. I would like for the contents of this thread to remain focused on the results of the survey, and discussion of the community to be moved to a separate thread.
Thank you in advance for cooperating.
It's a sorta small sample size though... isn't it?
The survey in general or the specific issue of the community?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Awesome. Sspitfire, is much of that report generated automatically from the results with some tool? Looked liked you had a ton of work on this, with all the quotes and the neat layout. I can see how this could be quit useful for GW especially once you can poll much bigger numbers. Will you keep doing this for free? :D I am sure companies pay hundreds of dollars for surveys like this(if not thousands).
Anyway, good read, thanks.
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Goblin Squad Member
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But the problem is that the 143 are just the hardcore who's voices (for the most part) are the ones that are always heard by GW.It's a sorta small sample size though... isn't it?A while back someone did some counting and estimated there are only about 200 "regular voices" here on Paizo's PFO boards. Getting a sample size of 143 may actually be pretty impressive if that figure's in the right ballpark.
The problem is that there are those who remain silent, when they have every opportunity to voice their opinion.
If only 143 voices are being heard, then I say kudos to them for contributing to the crowd forging process.
If the "silent" feel their voice is not being heard..... Wait..... Derp!
How can we place value on non contribution? Or better yet, why would we try to?
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Goblin Squad Member
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That type of aggressive response is probably WHY the less-vocal, and probably less-confrontational, voices are largely silent. Tone (and perceived tone) matters - as we saw just yesterday in a thread here.
I'm one of the 143, and probably considered fairly vocal, but even I find myself staying the hell away from the more heated discussions.
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Goblin Squad Member
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How can we place value on non contribution? Or better yet, why would we try to?
This.
This group has been at least as welcoming as any internet based social group. While we should be aware of the wallflowers, it is unreasonable to expect us to revolve our strategies around them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have to wonder what portion of those who felt their voices aren't being heard were unfairly excluded, how many self-selected by not posting at all, and how many burdened their intended contributions with destructive or abusive language choices leading to social aversion?
The results are the same regardless of the reason why. They choose to NOT participate, which is their choice, and their voice and vote was counted (as zero).
As Bluddwolf states above, they have multiple opportunities to be heard and make themselves heard (multiple forums, PMs, emails, VOIP, MMO gaming sites, in game Alpha, surveys, gaming conventions, interviews and Q&A with GW staff...), and non participation = consent to the will of the active participants. How can you place a value on a non vote?
Should we try to encourage new people to participate, treat them fairly, answer their questions and make them feel welcomed? Absolutely!
Should we bend over backwards for non-participating players (and settlements!), who choose not to participate? I say no.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That type of aggressive response is probably WHY the less-vocal, and probably less-confrontational, voices are largely silent. Tone (and perceived tone) matters - as we saw just yesterday in a thread here.
I'm one of the 143, and probably considered fairly vocal, but even I find myself staying the hell away from the more heated discussions.
Bluddwolf's response wasn't aggressive unless you are predisposed to feel he is aggressive. Everyone shouldn't feel like they need to participate in everything any more than everyone should be expected to restrain their opinions (and expression thereof) to the lowest common denominator.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That type of aggressive response is probably WHY the less-vocal, and probably less-confrontational, voices are largely silent. Tone (and perceived tone) matters - as we saw just yesterday in a thread here.
I'm one of the 143, and probably considered fairly vocal, but even I find myself staying the hell away from the more heated discussions.
His so called "aggressive" tone captures my feeling exactly, and I am no where as belligerent as he is (both in his forum postings and in chaotic PC persona), and considering what the underlying principle of this game is, I don't think he is wrong. I don't believe at all the a few active "loud" voice on this forum is what is "keeping" people away.
It could be that the very nature of this competitive game (on all levels) not solo friendly game is what is keeping these "less-vocal, and probably less-confrontational, voices" away.Their are over 8000 backers between both PFO KS, and maybe 200 or so active people here. I seriously doubt the big bad bandit is keeping them away and silent. :)
Deianira, I am glad your voice is being heard, and that you choose when, where and how to participate in this community. You don't HAVE to participate in all topics/threads or even feel like you need to, and just how you started, a lot more quite/silent/non-participating people can do the same.
Again, I believe we as a community should welcome and teach new players, and bring new blood into the hobby, but not at the expense of those who are active and passionate about this game right now when it counts in this crucial stage.
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(Bluddwolf and Andius will always be Bluddwolf and Andius).
I got to thinking about it and realized that this was both inappropriate and unhelpful. My apologies to Andius and Bluddwolf. In the future I am going to refrain from naming names.
Awesome. Sspitfire, is much of that report generated automatically from the results with some tool? Looked liked you had a ton of work on this, with all the quotes and the neat layout. I can see how this could be quit useful for GW especially once you can poll much bigger numbers. Will you keep doing this for free? :D I am sure companies pay hundreds of dollars for surveys like this(if not thousands).
Anyway, good read, thanks.
Thank you Tynacle.
I absolutely will not be continuing to do this for free. It costs *me* too much of my time and energy to do. Also, I will really only work with Qualtrics, which means right now I would have to keep doing this for free through Duke's access to the site. I'm pretty sure that would get noticed eventually and I don't want to tick off my Alma Matter.
That said, it was totally worth doing this this time around. It was a great learning opportunity and a great opportunity to stretch out my skills- something I haven't had in a while.
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Goblin Squad Member
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On topic: A statistically significant number of people reported that they felt excluded from the community due to clique formation. (This is different from the concern that certain voices dominate). It would likely improve PFO if we as a community made a concerted effort to make new members of the community not feel like outsiders, and to lower the learning curve for new community members. Does anyone have ideas for how to implement that, or insight into exactly what factors caused someone to feel discluded from a closed group?
Perhaps we can avoid conflating folks who feel excluded or shouted down with folks who don't participate. There's a fairly significant difference between the two, and being dismissive of the former isn't going to help anything.
Oh persnickety. So much for not being the source of controversy for a week...
I really would prefer this moved to a new thread, so I guess I will do that later today :/
All I will say now is that if there are 8,000 thousand backers, and we assume many of these folks want to participate in the crowdforging process, and GW is interested in hearing their voices, then a better tool is needed for that job (and yes, that tool is surveys). The boards are great. I think we could do better in both encouraging folks to participate and improving our own, personal methods of communication (that means *all* of us, not just the few that are commonly named for aggressive communication styles). However, we will never see 8,000 participating on these boards for a whole slew of reasons. And we will never see comments like the ones given in the survey go away. Lessened, maybe. But not gone.
I'll leave the rest for later.
Thank you all for the rich discussion. If you can at all hold further comments until I can get a dedicated thread up around 3 PM EST, I would appreciate it. The dedicated thread will open with a primer on the issue and ground rules for discussing it. In the mean time, feel free to PM me with any thoughts or ideas you would like to see included in the primer. In particular, I would appreciate ideas about 1. Possible helpful ground rules; 2. What does this community want the stated purpose of this forum to be? To give an example of a ground rule I will be including: No naming names. To give an example of a stated purpose: To be a valuable and robust source of information to new comers and old-timers alike.
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Goblin Squad Member
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All the people telling off the silent majority ask yourself the following question
a) Do you think I belong into this group ?
If your answer is yes, then you rightly rerile the silent. If your answer is no then ask - why wasn't I aware of the Survey?
I can't even tell you that myself right now. Was it bad timing and I wasn't here for 2 days, was I missed from some distribution lists, was I just too busy when I saw a message here and later forgot?
Can't tell - but I belong to the non-contributors and seeing the results would like to have contributed.
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Personally, I absolutely understand how people might feel drowned out and excluded around here. I am accustomed to forum communities and honestly feel that this one is more open than most, but that isn't going to be the case for everyone.
I like to think of myself as a player who contributes, though I do not typically end up making posts daily. However, it is easy to feel ignored, particularly when nobody bothers to respond to your post(s). I actually joked about this exact thing in a thread somewhere (I don't recall exactly which one) when I had posted once or twice - rather thoughtfully, in my opinion - and later joked that everyone was ignoring me because I wasn't being aggressive enough. (Amusingly, that post did get a response.)
This doesn't hurt my feelings, but it strikes me as a good example of the kind of thing that leads to people feeling shouted down/drown out.
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Goblin Squad Member
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However, it is easy to feel ignored, particularly when nobody bothers to respond to your post(s).
Yeah, this is a problem. I try to make an effort when I sense that it's happening to someone, but I think it's the nature of things that folks generally don't respond to posts with which they largely, but not passionately, agree.
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Personally, I absolutely understand how people might feel drowned out and excluded around here. I am accustomed to forum communities and honestly feel that this one is more open than most, but that isn't going to be the case for everyone.
I like to think of myself as a player who contributes, though I do not typically end up making posts daily. However, it is easy to feel ignored, particularly when nobody bothers to respond to your post(s). I actually joked about this exact thing in a thread somewhere (I don't recall exactly which one) when I had posted once or twice - rather thoughtfully, in my opinion - and later joked that everyone was ignoring me because I wasn't being aggressive enough. (Amusingly, that post did get a response.)
This doesn't hurt my feelings, but it strikes me as a good example of the kind of thing that leads to people feeling shouted down/drown out.
I had several similar experiences, especially from fast moving threads (where it's very understandable some posts don't register). Think I get more attention with this new avatar though XD
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Goblin Squad Member
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Can't tell - but I belong to the non-contributors and seeing the results would like to have contributed.
It was privately done by a generous community member. If you missed the thread, you missed it, but Spitfire did his best to bring it to people's attention, bumping the thread more than once and mentioning it in other places.
I think the discussion about the silent majority is much more general, and it's presence in this thread is only peripheral to this survey. There was no effort to exclude anyone, but anyone who doesn't read the boards will not have seen it, nor will anyone who ignored that thread or missed it in any other places it was mentioned.
In some ways, Spitfire's desire for an ordered universe makes him his own worst enemy. Keeping all mentions of a given topic under a single subject that clearly reflects it is very nice in almost every way, but does reduce its visibility.
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(Bluddwolf and Andius will always be Bluddwolf and Andius).I got to thinking about it and realized that this was both inappropriate and unhelpful. My apologies to Andius and Bluddwolf. In the future I am going to refrain from naming names.
No apology needed, at least I don't believe so. I am comfortable in the role that I have chosen, otherwise I would not post in the way that I do.
I don't have an issue with people being silent, that is their choice. I'm also not concerned if my approach makes them silent. If by my expressing opinions is the cause for some to remain silent, it is not my opinion or tone that is causing their silence, but their own lack of confidence in what they have to say.
"Stand up and be heard!" or remain silent and "Go with the flow".
What I don't do, or won't do, is say that someone's non contribution has any real value. There is nothing more useless than a silent majority. Just think of what that really means, the "silent majority". The silent majority is a group of people that can affect positive change, but refuse to do so.
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Goblin Squad Member
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(Bluddwolf and Andius will always be Bluddwolf and Andius).I got to thinking about it and realized that this was both inappropriate and unhelpful. My apologies to Andius and Bluddwolf. In the future I am going to refrain from naming names.
Something that sets Bluddwolf and myself apart from many others is that we do not feel we need the approval of the community to validate our thoughts and opinions, nor that their opposition makes us any less right when we are right. Truth is not crowdforged, and it is not a democracy. It simply is.
One voice more or less in my hordes of critics means absolutely nothing to me. So as Bluddwolf said. No apology needed.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Even a statistically significant fraction of the alpha players is no way representative of the entire community.
If the "entire community" is not able or willing to participate, what do you propose should be done?
Shooting someone's work down because of a lack of participation of this "missing silent majority " is not very constructive, eh?
The chief complaint here is that the community has a few highly vocal, dominant voices that drown out or deter others from participating.If all it takes to keep someone silent (on the internet) is a dominant voice, then it is likely a good thing they remain silent. There is no room for the timid in Crowd Forging. ;-)
Not to mention, it takes a strong voice to elicit a strong response. Ideally, they would drive the others to comment. I am sure people believe I am overstated often, but I am compelled to comment when I feel something.
It's kind of like drawing lines. The first person who makes a strong comment sets up each side. Then someone may come in and add another viewpoint, so it becomes like 'camps.' Kind of like idea territory control. heh. Nah, but seriously... from reading this forum I have a pretty good idea how many people think. I don't feel they are drowned out. Maybe to the devs. If someone posts one sentence that has their opinion in it, I take note of it. Some people don't like repeating the same thing over and over. Good thing I am able to take on that challenge for them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Even a statistically significant fraction of the alpha players is no way representative of the entire community.If the "entire community" is not able or willing to participate, what do you propose should be done?
Shooting someone's work down because of a lack of participation of this "missing silent majority " is not very constructive, eh?
Thanks for that.
I only mentioned it in the first place so that people could interpret the data subjectively, and not view the final analysis as being the 'law' of the game and its community.
This survey would have been time better spent, I believe, had it been done 1 year from now.
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A strident voice generates discomfort in the complacent, asking a question many would rather weren't asked.
Our questions often predict their answers. If their answers don't fit the facts, it is best to reform the questions.
But questions, to be questions, are necessarily formed in ignorance, and answers to uninformed questions will reinforce ignorance until they are used to better inform the question.
A good question is more reliably useful than an answer, but there are poorly informed questions.
Similarly a loud voice in the wilderness may merely be loud, rhetorical, and be no question at all.
This post will baffle some. Some will affirm it. Those who raise their voice to elicit a strong response should take into account the replies and moderate themselves with the new information they elicited. It isn't good enough to simply raise a strong voice.
A strident voice generates discomfort in the complacent, asking a question many would rather weren't asked.
Our questions often predict their answers. If their answers don't fit the facts, it is best to reform the questions.
But questions, to be questions, are necessarily formed in ignorance, and answers to uninformed questions will reinforce ignorance until they are used to better inform the question.
A good question is more reliably useful than an answer, but there are poorly informed questions.
Similarly a loud voice in the wilderness may merely be loud, rhetorical, and be no question at all.
This post will baffle some. Some will affirm it. Those who raise their voice to elicit a strong response should take into account the replies and moderate themselves with the new information they elicited. It isn't good enough to simply raise a strong voice.
haha, well. I don't think many people raise their voice. It's just the way it is. Look at people throughout history. Look at Winston Churchill. You have to be able to take a step back to look at someone's point of view, and be able to tell that they *care* and are *trying*, and appreciate that effort. If nothing else, you should be able to find humor in it.
I like everyone's suggestions. I disagree with some, but I see their merit. The idea is think... and think more. Then type what you are thinking.
Some people in life are legitimately angry at the so-called 'strong voices', and I don't understand that. Sure, if someone says something personal or is demeaning then, they need to be checked, but sometimes the force of a strong reply (and the self-confidence it has) leads people to believe they are being insulted.
This is why I rarely talk... it's just not worth it. However, in this case, when I feel there is something being shaped and that I paid to not be a part of the rudimentary product but to be a 'town council member.' I am sure other people feel the same way, at least in regards to wanting to speak their mind and feeling this is of extreme importance. Why be quiet at this point?
In life, you may learn that you cannot do anything without generating discomfort in someone; it is best to, then, use your actions for a cause you believe in.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ryan should love this. Studying market data is a hobby of his.I wonder what the market data of the $60.00 monocle turned out to be. From what I could gather, only 52 were sold and it essentially turned the MTX market in EvE into the butt of many jokes.
At one point, LotRO was going to put a child's wooden horse "mount" into their store for a whopping $50. They quietly dropped the idea after the Bullroarer crowd spilled the beans to forums and the threadnaught that ensued universally despised the idea.