You know, something I’ve always been curious about is general popular opinion on things in the game. And given some of the other suggestions here on this forum I think something that would allow us to view polls could be a useful tool for both people making suggestions and for Arena Net as well.
What I suggest is to make a location, ideally a building of some sort with npcs you talk to, in game with a unique interface of some sort where players can go and vote in polls that other players or Arena Net can set up. Making the results viewable by anybody who votes on a particular poll. This way we have a place where we can concretely point to and say that’s what people think. I say put it in game because the majority of people in any game never really ever go onto a forum, and those that do won’t necessarily go to wherever the poll is. And polls even if added to the forum would easily get drowned out by other polls or other forum topics.
To make it so that more people are likely to stop in and vote on polls, place the building somewhere convenient, like the middle of Lion’s Arch between the Trading Post and the Mystic Forge. There’s plenty of buildings that are just models there that can be used. I say make this a building you have to go to because there’s no need to clutter up our normal UI with anything extra. Placing it in Lion’s Arch somewhere convenient like that also makes it so its not a huge hassle for your average player to hop in, look through the available polls and cast an opinion real quick.
The most obvious negative to this would be trivial polls being added since this would be open to players under this setup. The easiest solution is to allow Trivial polls, but make it so one can sort through the polls by type with categories of “Game Mechanics,” “Classes,” “Story,” “Content Suggestions,” and “For Fun” as an example. Limit all polls as well so that you can only ask “Yes” or “No” questions, or “Agree” and “Disagree” questions. This would help limit polls that would skewed results. To help prevent further workarounds with that sort of thing, limit how long the poll question can be.
To encourage people to actually vote, a pretty simple thing that can be done is add an achievement related to it. Don’t make it worth too many points, treat it like the Agent of Entropy Achievement for example. Something small but worthwhile in the long run. A lot of people like achievements and something like that would be a good incentive to a lot of people.
Pros and Cons
+ A Useful Tool as long as polls are setup properly with good questions.
+ Non-intrusive, this is a big thing in my proposal. It does not clutter up the UI and does not constantly update us on the progress of a poll until we go check on it ourselves.
+ An easy way for people who normally would not bother due to time, motivation, or just apathy to voice their opinions on matters.
- The usefulness of the information is somewhat limited as it won’t provide solutions. People will still need to come up with a solution.
- There will still be completely apathetic people who won’t bother voicing their opinion.
- Polls could still be abused even with restrictions, having leading questions to force the sort of answer the person who posts the poll is looking for.
Now I’m not saying polls wouldn’t be nice on the forums as well. But quite frankly I find it would be more useful to have it in game where more people are likely to use it.
So Opinions? Additions?