Guild Wars 2

So I play dota 2 and one of the recent things they’ve done is The International Compendium. Compendiums are in game “books” that keep a record of the tournament as well as give other items and account boons and such. A significant portion of the money goes directly into the tournament prize pool as well as providing funding for new features as more are bought that are advertised on the compendium’s site. So far it has been a pretty huge success to the point that they had to make a new round of features because the goals for the first set of features was surpassed.

What I find great about the idea is that there is a direct link to the money spent to the features funded that is visible to the consumers. I am also curious how receptive the GW2 community is to the idea if it were applied to a new profession. So I’ll just throw up this poll and see what happens.

http://strawpoll.me/1865979

I just realized I messed up on the poll, the second choice should be:
No, I only buy gem store items for convenience or I don’t buy gem store items at all

-1

more words

Confused what it is you are trying to suggest… but looking at the strawpoll… am I correct to say that the idea is for Anet to make a new mini, sell it in gemstore, but the money for that specific mini all go to adding a new profession to the game?

If I am right… I am not sure what to think of it… kinda don’t see the point of it.

The point is that players are willing to spend more money if they know that the money is going towards something that they want. There’ve only been 12 votes on the poll but 5 out of 12 are willing to spend 500 gems towards an item that doesn’t really give them anything because it goes towards a new class. I think that alone says something

Wizzey.7845:

The point is that players are willing to spend more money if they know that the money is going towards something that they want. There’ve only been 12 votes on the poll but 5 out of 12 are willing to spend 500 gems towards an item that doesn’t really give them anything because it goes towards a new class. I think that alone says something

5 people out of the 3 million+ accounts that have been sold says nothing, mate.

if the 5 per 12 people trend continued for 3 million accounts, that would be 1 and a quarter million.

Two issues with this specific example:
1) Many people (like me) actually like minis and buy them for their own sake, this should be obvious because otherwise Anet wouldn’t keep making and selling them. So a lot of people would buy the mini because they want it, even if they couldn’t care less what will be done with the money afterwards.
2) The poll really needs an option for “It depends on what that profession is”. If they were going to release a profession I like the sound of then I’d want to support it, if they were going to release one that sounds like it’d be boring or horrible for the game I’d want to avoid doing anything to encourage it (or even stop it if I could).

More generally though I don’t think selling items with the money going to a specific, unrelated thing is a good idea.

I work for a charity (non-profit to the Americans), which obvious Anet is not but it’s the one field I know of where it’s common for people to donate money or buy a product specifically because they want to support something else. And it’s a mixed blessing at best.

On the one hand yes you can get more support for something if you’re able to say “your money will go towards XYZ” because people like to know exactly what they’re supporting. But on the other hand if you get more money than you need you’re stuck because you have to use it for the purpose you stated, but you don’t need it. (Most charities get around this by carefully wording the promotion so if necessary it can cover 2 or 3 different projects.)

Quite often you’re also dealing with the issue that people don’t really know what they want and certainly don’t know what they need. What sounds good and is likely to get a lot of support isn’t what actually needs to be done. So either you’re honest and get less money than you could have had (and possibly not enough to do the thing you were raising money for in the first place) or you try to word it so it sounds like what people want whilst actually being what needs to be done and hope the end result is good enough to cover the potential backlash if anyone figures it out. (Or you just do what sounds good even if it’s not really achieving anything, but then the whole thing is a wasted effort at best.)

I think it would be the same here. If Anet did say “buy X from the gem store and when we’ve sold 50,000 we’ll release the Chronomancer” for example they’d actually be promising a lot of things. They’d have to give a release date, they’d have to give some details on what the profession would be like and then they’d be stuck with that even if it doesn’t work. Or they don’t give any details, a bunch of players buy X to support it and then rage that Anet didn’t psychically make the profession they were personally imagining.

It’s much better to just keep gem store sales as a straight transaction; “Buy X and you get X” and then do what they, as the people able to see the full picture (including what’s coming in future that we haven’t been told about yet) can decide what to do with it and we can decide if we want to keep supporting the game or move on to something else.

Wizzey.7845:

if the 5 per 12 people trend continued for 3 million accounts, that would be 1 and a quarter million.

And 1 and 3 quarter million against.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Wizzey.7845:

The point is that players are willing to spend more money if they know that the money is going towards something that they want. There’ve only been 12 votes on the poll but 5 out of 12 are willing to spend 500 gems towards an item that doesn’t really give them anything because it goes towards a new class. I think that alone says something

5 people out of the 3 million+ accounts that have been sold says nothing, mate.

kickstarter says that it is definately a big market.
Its actually a pretty good idea because it incentizes spending, while providing a real feedback to the company.

Problem is tying it to a mini, thats something that has a limited contribution. only really reason for one, unless your intent is that their is no good reason to vote more than once per player?

I would think it would work better if it was something you could do many times if you wanted and still gave some benefit

Wizzey.7845:

if the 5 per 12 people trend continued for 3 million accounts, that would be 1 and a quarter million.

You need to learn a bit of how marketing research works before assuming such things.

The concerns about tying it to a mini make sense but this could easily just be an armor skin similar to all the professions specific starter equipment or could even just a be a giant heal o tron that makes a new profession once you feed it enough gems. I just figure that people would want to get some token in return for the money they give that doesn’t give them an advantage over those who don’t.

I didn’t want to add things to the poll that are basically maybe’s. An option that says
Yes if the class is cool, no if it is not is very vague.

if 3/4 of the playerbase doesn’t support it, they don’t have to spend gems on it. You don’t need everybody to support it to make it work.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Wizzey.7845:

if the 5 per 12 people trend continued for 3 million accounts, that would be 1 and a quarter million.

You need to learn a bit of how marketing research works before assuming such things.

please enlighten me then on how else I should interpret 5 out of 12 polltakers supporting an idea.

Wizzey.7845:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Wizzey.7845:

if the 5 per 12 people trend continued for 3 million accounts, that would be 1 and a quarter million.

You need to learn a bit of how marketing research works before assuming such things.

please enlighten me then on how else I should interpret 5 out of 12 polltakers supporting an idea.

kitten out of 12 people who saw the poll. Sample sizes don’t work with numbers this small.

Edit: Ok that’s a new one. A s is not the same as the body part.

Calys Teneb.7015:

Wizzey.7845:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Wizzey.7845:

if the 5 per 12 people trend continued for 3 million accounts, that would be 1 and a quarter million.

You need to learn a bit of how marketing research works before assuming such things.

please enlighten me then on how else I should interpret 5 out of 12 polltakers supporting an idea.

kitten out of 12 people who saw the poll. Sample sizes don’t work with numbers this small.

Edit: Ok that’s a new one. A s is not the same as the body part.

It is still more accurate than suggesting that only the 5 people that answered the poll would be the only ones that would do it which is what smooth penguin’s first response implied. I don’t doubt that there are biases involved in this poll that will skew the results but completely discounting the poll because of them gets us nowhere.

You still can’t extrapolate five votes out of twelve and have it be a viable statistic to state that over a million people would be in favor. Else we wouldn’t need more then twenty people to vote in any given election.

Calys Teneb.7015:

You still can’t extrapolate five votes out of twelve and have it be a viable statistic to state that over a million people would be in favor. Else we wouldn’t need more then twenty people to vote in any given election.

Did I make a guarantee that 1 million people would be in favor. No I did not. I said that IF, really emphasizing that IF, the 5/12 trend continued it would lead to that result. I did this in response to someone saying 5 votes don’t matter compared to 3 million registered accounts.

What makes more sense, applying the ratio a poll suggests to the entire pool of registered accounts or comparing the people who voted yes to a poll to the entire pool of registered accounts?

Wizzey.7845:

Calys Teneb.7015:

You still can’t extrapolate five votes out of twelve and have it be a viable statistic to state that over a million people would be in favor. Else we wouldn’t need more then twenty people to vote in any given election.

Did I make a guarantee that 1 million people would be in favor. No I did not. I said that IF, really emphasizing that IF, the 5/12 trend continued it would lead to that result. I did this in response to someone saying 5 votes don’t matter compared to 3 million registered accounts.

What makes more sense, applying the ratio a poll suggests to the entire pool of registered accounts or comparing the people who voted yes to a poll to the entire pool of registered accounts?

Comparing the number people who voted yes, not the percentage of people who voted yes. You only have five people on board with your idea, no matter what the percentage of respondents suggests. You can extrapolate a percentage, but applying it won’t give you reliable results, because in the end thus far you only have five people confirmed.

Now the flip side to that is you don’t know how many people would vote against the idea out of all those accounts either. So neither you or Smooth are entirely right or wrong.

I never claimed that this would provide any reliable results as to total numbers for or against so stop attacking claims I didn’t make. I don’t think that any results from a poll like this could give accurate results since everyone who takes it had to:
A) look at the forums
B) look at this particular thread
C) had to answer the poll
The only way to get accurate results is to actually go through with the idea. The point of the poll is to get an idea of how many people would be behind the idea before going through with it.

That aside, saying everybody that didn’t take the poll would say no (which is what comparing the yes votes to the entire pool is doing) does not make any sense.

Wizzey.7845:

I never claimed that this would provide any reliable results as to total numbers for or against so stop attacking claims I didn’t make. I don’t think that any results from a poll like this could give accurate results since everyone who takes it had to:
A) look at the forums
B) look at this particular thread
C) had to answer the poll
The only way to get accurate results is to actually go through with the idea. The point of the poll is to get an idea of how many people would be behind the idea before going through with it.

That aside, saying everybody that didn’t take the poll would say no (which is what comparing the yes votes to the entire pool is doing) does not make any sense.

No, you’re right, if you interpret it as everyone that didn’t take the poll as voting no, you’re extrapolating it in an extremely negative light which doesn’t make sense. You simply have five out of twelve people in favor of your idea. You don’t know that the rest of the population is for or against it, as they haven’t voted.

You don’t have three million “no” votes, you have three million “abstain” which means nothing. That’s why I said the only way to interpret 5/12 is exactly that, 5/12.

I think it’s cute that you’re trying so hard to get people to visit your poll. But cuteness aside, your poll is meaningless. Even if you get more responses, there’s no way to differentiate players from non-players, real answers or troll, and Gem Buyers from Gem Exchangers.

Note – I could spam 100,000 “no” votes to your 5 “yes” votes, and it would hold the same weight as 100,000 “yes” votes to 5 “no” votes. Why? Because meaningless poll is meaningless. The only accurate way to get data is to work for Anet, and have access to their metrics.

So..it’s like a paid petition?

Calys Teneb.7015:

No, you’re right, if you interpret it as everyone that didn’t take the poll as voting no, you’re extrapolating it in an extremely negative light which doesn’t make sense. You simply have five out of twelve people in favor of your idea. You don’t know that the rest of the population is for or against it, as they haven’t voted.

You don’t have three million “no” votes, you have three million “abstain” which means nothing. That’s why I said the only way to interpret 5/12 is exactly that, 5/12.

going by this logic, every poll is useless because it does not take every single person’s opinion.
You are right that I don’t know for sure what the rest of the population is thinking but I do have a better idea of what they are thinking than if I didn’t look at the poll results at all.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I think it’s cute that you’re trying so hard to get people to visit your poll. But cuteness aside, your poll is meaningless. Even if you get more responses, there’s no way to differentiate players from non-players, real answers or troll, and Gem Buyers from Gem Exchangers.

Note – I could spam 100,000 “no” votes to your 5 “yes” votes, and it would hold the same weight as 100,000 “yes” votes to 5 “no” votes. Why? Because meaningless poll is meaningless. The only accurate way to get data is to work for Anet, and have access to their metrics.

The longer this stays on the front page, the more votes I gather, the more useful the poll is. I hadn’t considered people would sabotage the votes because only a troll would do that and I am not a troll. however, I am convinced that you are a troll, and so will no longer respond to you.

This whole poll thing is cute. Cupcakes and soda after the poll closes.

Caelus.7139:

So..it’s like a paid petition?

Yeah, I’d say it is closest to kickstarter funding and I am not sure if there is a term for that.

JustTrogdor.7892:

This whole poll thing is cute. Cupcakes and soda after the poll closes.

Do you know if I need to have to give my GW2 account login to answer this poll?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

JustTrogdor.7892:

This whole poll thing is cute. Cupcakes and soda after the poll closes.

Do you know if I need to have to give my GW2 account login to answer this poll?

I don’t think you do. But…..

You shouldnt have included the poll, this thread has turned into a debate on statistical analysis and usefull polls, rather than a discussion of the premise.

This idea should be discussed as an idea, not really as poll.

Well I was hoping it would be both since these things are not mutually exclusive, but as you see, it got derailed along the way. I’m pretty surprised how many yes votes I’ve seen so far in the poll since I was definitely expecting more no’s than yes’s. I’ll see how long this thread stays alive and how many votes pile up.