16
Aym, on 21 April 2014 - 05:51 PM, said:
I'm glad this was finally brought up as I've been itching to address it. In order, the argument that the people on the forums are not necessarily representative of the player base has been brought up in regards to this topic and many others, most notably in my experience with 3PV. While certainly statistical analysis of the forum posters will show they tend to be a non-representative mix in many regards, how can we say with certainty that they are not representative in terms of these game features? The same argument was brought out during the 3PV debacle with overwhelming support for a 1PV only queue and yet when developers said the forum posters represented a minority, and were on an island, and implemented 3PV they realized they couldn't bother with a 3PV only queue because no one would use it and, lo and behold, practically no one uses it in game, so perhaps the forum posters were by and large right on that one, despite being very non-representative in other ways. I contend therefore that we should not refer to the "vocal minority of forum posters" as such an aberrant demographic and at least see what reasons can be gleaned from this thread, because you're very unlikely to get reasons for solo dropping by just analyzing drop numbers.
By reading the posts I disagree with your assertion that the people reading this by and large "spend large parts (or even all) of their game time as part of the 16%." Furthermore if it's really 16% of drops, not players, the number of players dropping in groups is at least 33% as basic math shows, and based on the reasons shown here (ie being able to immediately drop again after dying, not waiting for the match to finish, team mates to deal with IRL issues, or even have team mates switch things in the mechbay) solo droppers can account for a disproportionate number of drops w/out actually representing relative numbers in the population.
Lastly, I'll admit the flashy title was partly positioning on my part to get views, especially with the merged General Discussion, I felt a little marketing would go along way, and I believe it has paid dividends.
By reading the posts I disagree with your assertion that the people reading this by and large "spend large parts (or even all) of their game time as part of the 16%." Furthermore if it's really 16% of drops, not players, the number of players dropping in groups is at least 33% as basic math shows, and based on the reasons shown here (ie being able to immediately drop again after dying, not waiting for the match to finish, team mates to deal with IRL issues, or even have team mates switch things in the mechbay) solo droppers can account for a disproportionate number of drops w/out actually representing relative numbers in the population.
Lastly, I'll admit the flashy title was partly positioning on my part to get views, especially with the merged General Discussion, I felt a little marketing would go along way, and I believe it has paid dividends.
agreed
yes the forums are a minority of the player population on a whole. So is any and every survey ever completed by a statistician. We can make educated guesses based on the reaction of the forums (whether I personally agree or disagree with some of the sentiments expressed at times). This is especially true when you have a widely universal response to something. As Aym said earlier, 3pv is a great example. The average poll here gets a few dozen votes usually. A really popular poll might see a few hundred votes. A few THOUSAND voted against 3pv and later for a 3pv only queue. PGI thought their idea was great, the community universally disagreed, they did it anyway. Also as Aym pointed out, the prevailing theory as to why is because PGI knew a 3pv queue would be an utter ghost town leaving new players joining it to be easy pickings for the ggclose and roflstomp crowd.
Now with all of that said, you can also see when it's generally a select few posting multiple threads on the same subject with the same handful of players and noone else arguing it in circles. There's typically no real support for either side. Those are the "vocal minority" often talked about.
In this particular case we have a really solid suggestion that no one can dispute with anything other than the typical rhetoric seen since CB about groups.
As far as the "84%"? That's been disproven, shot down, shown to be poorly collected data, etc. Now we STILL have people clinging to that number as "proof" that people wanting a group queue are the minority in one breath but quickly turn around and say "groups are everywhere and roflstomping and that's why we shouldn't have 2-12 man groups allowed". You can't have it both ways guys. You either agree that groups are the minority OR they're everywhere and "ruining" the game. When you look through post histories, see what's been said, etc. you can clearly see that some just have some sort of bias against groups and will use whatever propaganda tools they can to support their anti-group agenda.
As Aym said, that "14%"? That's also your 84%. That also completely disregards every single solo player that flat out stated they'd rather drop in a group queue than the solo queue. So that automatically and indisputably refutes a solid "84%".
Paul doesn't like groups, that much is apparent. That's fine, for him and everyone who agrees with him. That doesn't mean it's fine to do everything possible to exclude, alienate, and otherwise run off groups. Agree, disagree, or otherwise, you can look through any and every other successful MMO out there that has some sort of persistent campaign in it and the backbone of those games are organized units. Solo/casual players don't make websites, build TS servers, or advertise units on the internet to help promote the game. It goes way beyond any simple %
