Since Dramazing accidentally made it a poll you could give a full response too rather than just 'yes/no' for the questions I thought would only really be 'yes/no' responses, it provided people an opportunity to really let loose their opinions in a very easy to read fashion in a single location. Check out the raw responses here, they're anonymous except for admins so I don't know who is who.
I suppose an important question is; did this help give people some sense of control or catharsis? I don't think I'm gonna figure that out with just one poll.
I really wanted to do the poll in order to give players more of a chance to express their opinions and see what shook out. On top of that, provide a chance for players to have more of a say. I think the majority of the participants in the poll did so meaningfully and approached it appropriately. I think it was a good showing, and I do appreciate we got to do this.
That said, its worth looking at some of the numbers to see just how broad the potential interest in this might be. It seems to me that between the two populations that ended up experiencing the testmerge, most didn't necessarily experience the changes, but also most didn't care to express their opinions either. Or at least, didn't go further than the first question asked.
It could be that that the polling method was the issue, and it may well have been. But since at least 143 people did respond to at least the first question, that's still probably decent coverage across two servers for our current player base given it ran for at least a week and was given a signal boost.
Particularly, when I received feedback, the ways in which that feedback was presented differed a lot. Notably, even direct feedback about the BR-38 only got about 30 responses, and only about 20 were actual constructive or actionable feedback (the remaining amount either not terribly helpful or just repeating what they said on other questions). Meanwhile, people discussing the combat shotgun removal ranged fairly broadly in terms of their reasoning, and particularly even amongst those opposed to it there was quite a lot of variability for their reasoning.
I don't want to make this some sweeping declaration in terms of 'how this speaks to our culture/server/whatever', I do think it is worth highlighting that, as far as a tool goes, you probably won't see much greater response to questions about minor changes like this beyond the small number of the population that want to have a meaningful stake in the matter. But maybe including them ore directly in that could be a positive outcome.
At the very least, I think this process is a really good tool for evaluating changes for a contributor and I think provides some really good, usable feedback in an easy to digest format that the github comment section simply doesn't allow because of the way that it operates as more like an open conversation. Also a good amount of chuckles from responses like this
For the players, who knows. Maybe if we do this enough and give players a chance enough to make their opinions at least heard and considered, it could be a good step towards maybe cutting down on resentment towards contributors.Some Responder wrote: its useless weapon, it litteraly can kill me.
