[2018] A Major Issue with the Recent Poll

Originally posted by BioMasterZap

A poll was released today, and it made a very questionable choice. I am not talking about the wording, but the way they went about the poll. Usually the default is no change and 75% support is needed to make a change. In the current poll that is not the case.

What and Why?

In a recent poll we were asked "Do you want A? B will happen as a result." A lot of players were fine with A but didn't want B. Both were polled in the same question and it passed with 86.6%. But a lot of players were still unhappy with this, so they polled B separately. Yet despite it being a change to how the game currently is, instead of needing 75% to be added, the poll was worded so that it needs 75% to not be added.

This is an extremely bad practice and goes against the polling system. We weren’t given a chance to vote for what we wanted. We were forced to vote for more than we wanted and given an unfair poll to keep existing behavior.

"If the community wants it"

As you probably figured out, A is Spellbook Filters and B is Icon Resizing. There were 67,829 voters in favor of Spellbook Filters yet so far only 9,859 voters are in favor of Icon Resizing. While the poll is still new and that number will surely grow, there is a drastic different in support for the two. Spellbook Filters/Icon Resizing for 86.6% support while just Icon Resizing is currently at 50.6%.

If instead of them polling Spellbook Filters and Icon Resizing in the same question we were instead offered "Do you want Spellbook Filters" and a separate "If Spellbook Filters pass, should the Icons Resize?" based on what we've seen so far Icon Resizing would not have gotten close to 75% support. So if this is something that wouldn't get 75% support to add, why does it need 75% support to keep it out of the game?

Consequences

But you may be fine with both so why does this matter? It matters because this is manipulative and it could be used to force other updates through in the future.

For example, imagine if early next year the question for Song of the Elves read "Should we add Song of the Elves? This would require Warding as part of the quest." The question passes because players want the Grandmaster Quest, but a lot of players didn't want Warding added that way, but instead of polling "Do you want Warding" and requiring 75% to add it, they poll "Do you not want Warding?" and it needs only 25% to add it.

While that is a rather ridiculous example, it illustrates how this method can be used to pressure players to vote for content they don't want. Bundled questions on their own can be bad, but offering players a second chance that doesn’t play by the normal rules is just wrong. In the past they've said if MTX were ever to be added it would be put to a poll, but what if that poll was "Do you not want Treasure Hunter?" and required 75% support to keep it out instead of the expected way? So even if you don't care about Icon Resizing, this is a very dangerous precedent to set.

Resolutions

Chances are their intention wasn't to be manipulative, so how can they fix this? The simple way would be to void both previous polls and make a new poll offering two questions: "Do you want Spellbook Filters" and a separate "If Spellbook Filters pass, should the Icons Resize?". It will delay things a bit, but a delay should be worth it for proper community representation.

If Jagex doesn’t offer any resolution to this problem and makes the update without any further through because 75% didn't oppose the change, then a lot of credit and trust will be lost for both the OSRS Team and the Polling System.

Originally posted by GentleTractor

Except that train of thought is not entirely accurate due to the nature of the first poll technically bundling multiple things into 1, forcing players to vote through something they perhaps don’t want (large icons) in order to get something they do want (spell filters). We’ve seen it happen before, where people will vote something through because they like a big part of it, but are left somewhat aggravated that they’re having to also vote through something they don’t want that’s attached to it.

As the recent repoll has shown, the enlarged icons is an extremely contentious point. The implication there should be that a ton of people clearly wanted the filters, but the support isn’t anywhere near as strong for the large icons.

What you actually should have done is straight up separated it out into 2 clear & concise polls with no ambiguity.

“Should the ability to filter spells in the spellbook from the mobile client also be made available on the PC client? Yes/No”.

“Should the ability to have enlarged spell icons when filtering spells from the mobile client also be made available on the PC client? Yes/No.”

Originally posted by Deacon_Steel

You guys ignore results of previous polls all the time. For example, all of the fossil island wyverns still drop the visage even though it was polled that only the ancient wyverns would drop it.

Originally posted by r0naldismyname

Fossil Island was before I joined the team so I’m not exactly sure what happened there, sorry.

Don't you work for Jagex? Find out, man. None of us are exactly sure what happened but we don't work for Jagex.

My God, just do your job.

EDIT: I'm ignorant and stupid because the person who gets paid to be the bridge between the players and the company gave a shit answer.

Why even comment at all? I would've been happy with "but I'll find out" thrown at the end of the original reply.

Originally posted by GentleTractor

I really don’t understand why you’re not willing to take the stance of simply voiding the previous polled results based on poll integrity issues and resubmitted them as the aforementioned 2 questions. That’s kind of worrying to me. You’re basically willing to say “We know this is an issue” and “We know the outcome might have changed if we’d polled it correctly”, but you’re still not going to?

Surely everyone - you guys on the OSRS team & the wider community - would prefer the polls actually reflect what people want in game? Surely if it meant giving everyone peace of mind you’d simple re-do it. If both pass then great, everyone is happy and we can all rest easy knowing the questions were fully understood and serve as an accurate reflection of the majority of voting players. But if one passes and one fails then we can see there was clearly an issue, and it was able to have been tackled before it was too late.

---

And just to quickly put my own biases out there: I initially would have voted yes to both of them as I didn’t really see any reason not to (based on my own personal playing style). However given the feedback that came in from primarily the PvP community about how it’ll reduce the overall skill ceiling for them by lessening the emphasis on click accuracy & precision, I’m more than willing to vote to help those guys out as I think the concern is a valid one.

Originally posted by GentleTractor

Perhaps I’m misinterpreting things here or we’re looking at different sets of data somehow? The whole argument is that the first question passed with such a high percentage because people absolutely wanted spellbook filtering, but some may not have wanted the large icons to come with it but had no choice other than to vote yes if they wanted filtering anyway.

The second poll specifically about icon size, as of time of writing, is sitting around 49% of people being against larger icons. If this were a traditional poll done correctly, as OP states, where a 75% margin is needed for a change to be enacted, then this would be failing spectacularly with only 51% approval.

But because you worded it so that it needs only 26% of people in favour for it to pass, it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion.

Originally posted by dangheck

Well in that case you should make the tome of fire provide infinite fire tunes even when uncharged. As that’s how it was worded in the poll. As a matter of fact that’s how it was worded in every blog post poll and update except the very very first blog post.

But what was actually voted on was that the tome of fire to provide infinite fire rune in offhand, and when you charge it with pages it increases damage of fire spells.

Similar issue with Craw’s Bow. Craw’s Bow simply states it provides its own ammo and doesn’t consume ammo, and when it is charged with ether it does extra shit against wilderness creatures. So it should provide its own limitless ammo when uncharged. That’s specifically what was polled and voted on, regardless of the intentions when the question was made.

Please carefully check and word everything if you’re going to take the polling system so seriously.

Originally posted by BioMasterZap

If you honestly can't see the how big of a mistake you made, then you lost all my support. This poll IS bypassing the polling system. In the past, you HAVE repolled things that already passed and you have gone against poll results in these sort of situations. The fact you're ignoring those and changing your tune with this poll shows a huge bias on your part.

If you want examples, Karambwanji. They passed a poll, but they were polled again because the original poll didn't state they'd lose the ability to cook them. Or how giving Rune and Adamant Dragons a 100$ drop of Superior Dragon Bones passed but it was changed pre-release for balancing with no poll.

This is the same sort of situations. But instead, it being something omitted or a balancing change, it was a bundled question. Yes, 86.6% did vote for Icon Resizing, but only because you bundled it with Spellbook Filters. Look at the current poll and tell me that 75% of players want Icon Resizing. If a new Skill has less then 60% support, you wouldn't add it. Yet less than 60% are in favor of adding Icon Resizing and you are going to add it because 75% aren't opposed.

This is completely backward and entirely your fault for not splitting the question, to begin with. You knew from the Dev Blog that players didn't like Icon Resizing, but you left the question as is and didn't give us the option to say no, then gave a rigged poll later to say you gave us the option. Players never wanted Icon Resizing, they wanted Spellbook Filters. And if the 50% opposed doesn't make this clear, you aren't fit to manage this community.

Originally posted by russel204

Do you guys dread having to write these polls knowing that no matter what you do you’re going to take flak for how it was worded?

Originally posted by Deacon_Steel

That absolutely was not meant to be a dig at you or the team, just meant to show that you have a precedent to revert on what was voted on to clarify what the players actually want.

Originally posted by dangheck

My bad that’s correct. It was the wiki descriptions that were lacking. I had stopped playing at that time and hadn’t participated in the blog or poll, but I mistakenly remembered looking at them trying to figure it out too. Sorry about that.