Consolidating wishlist and polls

[SteveP]

I'd like to design one or more polls to try and consolidate our wishlist choices and seek to prioritize interest in features. This thread is just intended to gather options and poll design feedback.

I think we could break the polls up in several categories such as:

1. Wildlife additions
2. Wildlife behaviours
3. Firewood and other fuels
4. Fire making
5. Foods especially harvestable foods found in nature
6. Forging and Knapping and other TBD technolgies
7. Medicines & illnesses
8. Injuries and threats
9. Tools
10. Weapons
11. Shelter
12. Clothing
13. Resources (TBD)
14. Activities (non-functional such as decorative items, beads, carvings, trade items...)

Am I missing any categories?

Go ahead and list items you want to see in a poll or discussion. We'll try to avoid specifics here, just brainstorm a list. Of course, each choice should deserve one or more topics devoted to discussion.

Thank you very much for your assistance with this.

[SteveP]

Wildlife: moose, beaver, wolverine, cougar, squirrels, porcupine, elk, caribou (similar to elk but smaller but possibly a draft animal), eagles or hawks, snails, clams, grouse, ducks, loons, feral chickens, feral pigs, feral cats & dogs, ferrets (weasels), cave bats, cave rats

Wild life behaviours: migration, wolf pack, coordinated wolf attacks (on elk or people), cougar ambush, grouse calls and alarms, friendly wild life, taming animals, crazy animal behaviour, bird attacks

Activities: taming animals (wolves, ferrets, caribou), crafting beads, porcupine quills, teeth, claws and seashells for decoration of clothing etc., tanning hides, mounting trophies, taxidermy, carving, map sticks, food preparation, smoking, preserving (canning), music, fly tying, making animal calls, making candles, collectibles, rugs

Sounds: grunting, grouse drumming, loon calls

Visual effects: aurora borealis, enhanced storm clouds, weather warnings for next day (red sky)

Fuels & energy: gasoline, electricity, electric generator, candles, wax & tallow, fire properties (amount of tinder, kindling, heat, embers, banking the fire)

Light sources: bio-luminescent fungi in caves

Fire making: bow drill, char cloth, flint and steel, fire plow, lighters, potassium permanganate & glycerine, gun powder (accelerant), amadou

Hunting techniques: ferreting rabbits, fish nets, rabbit nets, more snares, traps and deadfalls

Clothing: fur cap, mukluks, heavy Inuit style parka, heavy mitts with liners, sunglasses or Inuit slit glasses

Shelters: temporary shelters, wind breaks, snow house, igloo, log cabin, cabin repairs, tarps & tents

Foods: mussels from the ocean, inner bark (cambium), various herbal plants (TBD), intoxicants (alcohol, mushrooms, etc), edible fungi, berries, nuts (esp pine nuts), farming, animal husbandry, cannibalism, trail mix, pemmican, smoked meat or fish

Weapons: spears, atlatl, snares, deadfalls, pit traps, hockey stick, snowballs, pebbles, sticks & stones

Knapping: blade & core, bifaces, adze, knives, arrow points, spear points, decorative, mortar and pestle, grinding & abrading stone

Forging: tempering, new tools, honing, heat treating, tool repairs

Injuries and threats: scurvy, avalanches, mud, rolling logs, poisonous plants (poison oak, ivy etc), rabid or sick animals, shivering, snow blindness/glare, snow-bound, overheating (hyperthermia), sweating, insanity, loneliness, diseases in caves, water in caves, crazy people, killer chickens, killer turkeys

Tools: draw knife, auger, nails, hammer, cordage, ropes, nets, fishing lures (fly tying? metal spinners & flashers), game calls, ladders, ice fishing tools for setting net or making holes, thermos & containers, fishing bait and lures, compass

Transportation: skiis, snowshoes, bicycle, toboggan, sledge, cars & trucks, horses, mules, pack goats (llamas)

New activities: more tracking options, reading, trading, conversations with NPCs, struggle with hostile NPCs, mini-games, learning actual survival stuff from say books or NPCs, navigation (compass maps, sun sticks, moss on trees), trail marking, musical instruments

New actions: dragging objects (limbs, carcasses, corpses) inventory management features, combing foods in soups and stews,

Special features: map editor, add-ons or mods, game map, HUD/status screen enhancements: carry weight, journal preservation, new regions, loading screen quotes and tips, Forum feature whiteboard (this), animations for activities, snow depth and density

[SteveP]

Why isn't this more interesting to y'all?

A good way to make this game successful and to ensure that it continues to meet our future expectations is to plan the course of action for game features.

To put this into a survival perspective, we can make use of the STOP acronym. S means stop and think. Take inventory and eliminate things we don't need and focus energy on the ideas that are fruitful. I think are really wide poll would be a good idea to capitalize on the agile advantage of Hinterland and a good talking point for the next announcement.

There are 2,195 topics in Wishlist. I think I need help with this. Who is with me on this??

I have gone through the first three pages on wishlist. only 85 more to go.

 

[illanthropist]

With respect, that's no doubt something the community engagement team have been doing all along, plus I hazard that any data from polls is not reflective of the wider playerbase.  People who actively engage in forums tend to represent only a small minority of play styles and those needs don't often fit with what's best for the larger market share.

It's one thing to chat about a feature we'd like to see but the scale of your undertaking is something I'd rather trust in the collective wisdom and experience of the development team. It's one thing to have a community focus and another to be community led.

Have faith in the beard

edit: just thought I'd say "it's one thing" one more time, really should read back what I type more often!

[SteveP]

17 minutes ago, illanthropist said:

With respect, that's no doubt something the community engagement team have been doing all along, plus I hazard that any data from polls is not reflective of the wider playerbase.  People who actively engage in forums tend to represent only a small minority of play styles and those needs don't often fit with what's best for the larger market share.

It's one thing to chat about a feature we'd like to see but the scale of your undertaking is something I'd rather trust in the collective wisdom and experience of the development team.  It's one thing to have a community focus and another to be community led.

Have faith in the beard

That there is already a consolidated list had occurred to me. It also occurred to me that there might not be or there might be more than one or it might be in someone's head or heads.

The people on the forum are those currently engaged and interested. They represent the most motivated sector and also a wide variety of play styles. That's why I'm suggesting a white board approach for brain storming. When people see ideas and contribute ideas, there is a factorial increase in new ideas by cross-pollination. By breaking down into categories, I was able to identify several new categories as well as come up with some interesting crazy ideas such as ferret hunting. We are only limited by our imaginations (and of course economics)

The wishlist is great because it gives people a place to put their ideas; it encourages creative thinking in ways that the devs cannot do alone. If Hinterland promotes the idea of an interactive community contributing ideas they are letting the fans help define the marketing direction and create interest out there in the broader community. What other independent development group has adopted this approach? I submit that we are breaking ground.

I have another way of gauging interest by looking at the view count for the various threads. Certain ideas are getting a lot of interest but it's not showing up in the "Like" rankings. A comprehensive user poll will demonstrate interest levels for ideas.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts; they often help me to clarify thinking and focus on rationale and ways of looking at the big picture.

[SteveP]

Page 4 of the wishlist.

Activities: cleaning house, exercising to boost strength

Sounds: scuttling noises in caves

[SteveP]

Page 5

Activities: creating rubbish and cleaning rubbish. making soap from tallow and ashes, extracting birch tar for hafting or glue

Animals: grizzlies, woodland bison, foxes, lynx/bobcat, coyotes, ptarmigan, geese, songbirds, marmots, mice, insects, grubs, owls, seals (for seal-oil), polar bears (eat seals eh)

Fuels: fish oil for lamps, rendered fat (tallow) for candles or lanterns

Navigation: compass

Lighting: ceiling hook for lanterns, sconce for torches

Curing: ceiling hooks or lines to improve air flow and decrease curing time, tanning rack

Hunting tactics: tracking: scat (feces, poops), urine stains, tracks; bear baiting with tree stand, duck/geese decoys, fishing line for snares

Weapons: shotgun (scatter gun), scope for rifle

Visual effects: smoke from fires

Special features: co-op mode, user-control (customizing difficulty and spawns), physics, solving puzzles/improvising, Easter eggs (iconic images), customizable player character

[illanthropist]

Page 6

Let the professionals do their job!

2 hours ago, SteveP said:

That there is already a consolidated list had occurred to me. It also occurred to me that there might not be or there might be more than one or it might be in someone's head or heads.

Do you think that the community engagement team's sole purpose is to police the forums and copy/paste thanks for your suggestions?  Your comment is borderline insulting, look at the background profiles of the Hinterland staff, it's not their first rodeo by any means.

4 hours ago, SteveP said:

Why isn't this more interesting to y'all?

That should maybe tell you something!

[SteveP]

Let me clarify something. No disrespect is intended for anyone. No insults are intended. I have spent about 30 years in customer support, hardware and software development with considerable experience in both formal software development and agile software development in large and small groups. The last years have focused on methodology as well as team psychology; I hope any suggestions along those lines are interpreted as positive suggestions.

In QA, it was my job to encourage others to document processes or to participate constructively in postmortem reviews and performance testing and to expose systemic problems. Often people will respond defensively, even to useful feedback. It's a tricky art giving feedback and suggestions. In QA we focus on processes; reviews are never ever intended to be part of the blame game.

I am a professional. I also have a beard if that is any consolation.

[vancopower]

3 hours ago, SteveP said:

Let me clarify something. No disrespect is intended for anyone. No insults are intended. I have spent about 30 years in customer support, hardware and software development with considerable experience in both formal software development and agile software development in large and small groups. The last years have focused on methodology as well as team psychology; I hope any suggestions along those lines are interpreted as positive suggestions.

In QA, it was my job to encourage others to document processes or to participate constructively in postmortem reviews and performance testing and to expose systemic problems. Often people will respond defensively, even to useful feedback. It's a tricky art giving feedback and suggestions. In QA we focus on processes; reviews are never ever intended to be part of the blame game.

I am a professional. I also have a beard if that is any consolation.

I believe that this topic is too broad, you can not expect us to jump in and post like crazy also it will serve no purpose, as I recently learned at the time when you are posting something look fine but after a while if the topic is too broad or people tent to divert from the topic the whole thing becomes a mess  so I would advise you to create topics that are more specific and don't forget we are all here to help not state our minds or have casual conversation with people that we will never meet, also I have a beard too and as one bearded man to another let's be creative and make some topic that would really help this project I am sure that you can come up with something better. 

[SteveP]

Keeping things concrete and specific rather than abstract helps for sure; thanks for the tip, Vancopower. I think maybe I have enough to tackle a few more polls. I'm cautious about suggesting changes that affect product vision or product technology; after all, people can be defensive. I expected this was something we as fans can collaborate on. At some point in the process, you start to get diminishing returns on effort so maybe that point has already been reached. This list of suggestions I've listed is quite large! I think I got most of the important ones but wanted to give others an opportunity to spot anything I missed.

[hauteecolerider]

I've been reading this with some interest as I have many thoughts about the game. And I see that most of it has already been brought up. Flint knapping was one of the first things I wondered about, especially when you run out of whetstones and your knife is worn down to the back (thickest part of the blade). 

Yup, it's possible to wear a knife down so much, eventually. When I was in necropsy in vet school, my brand-new knife had an inch-wide blade, similar to a chef's knife.

The necropsy tech, who had been working there for yeeeeaaars, had the same kind of knife, only it looked more like this:

He had already been there 20 years when I knew him. Learned how to sharpen knives from him, on a tri-stone system where you rotated the stones, and the next side you would use already soaking in the oil trough. Got pretty good at it, too.

 

[LucidFugue]

A pretty thorough effort SteveP and if you're willing to go through and maintain this list I think you deserve the recommends. 

One thing I know I've asked for before is an enhancement to the breath effect, both in terms of being affected by wind, but also being much more ragged and short after sprinting. Matching the sound and visual effect would add to immersion in my opinion, and would be a lovely bit of polish. 

[nicko]

Hey guys and girls I know you all mean best in creating these polls but I would rather the devs Hinterland create one then we know what they may want or respect. Otherwise to me your community poll is just more of another wish list going know where?

[SteveP]

1 hour ago, nicko said:

Hey guys and girls I know you all mean best in creating these polls but I would rather the devs Hinterland create one then we know what they may want or respect. Otherwise to me your community poll is just more of another wish list going know where?

This wishlist summary was intended to be just a working draft to get to a set of polls. The polls summarize the options and focus discussion onto big picture, I hope. I like polls because they rapidly illustrate community support in a very condensed form. An advantage of a poll is that additional options can be added by the pollster, the person who first drafts out the Topic and Poll. The pollster needn't be a single person but an owner of a functional category. Nothing stops the devs from making polls either; they can if they think it's a good use of their time.

I'm wondering if this is too heavyweight or abstract given the advice to keep things simple and concrete instead of broad and general. Polls should be fun after all!

[nicko]

Also adding extra options/choices to a poll shouldn't be allowed after users have started submitting. surely that would effect the results. seems crazy.

I have noticed this on some recent polls, the poll creator can add new options/questions to it?

[Scyzara]

48 minutes ago, nicko said:

Also adding extra options/choices to a poll shouldn't be allowed after users have started submitting. surely that would effect the results. seems crazy.

You're right, adding additional choices to a vote several days later greatly falsifies the results. And so does poor (=incomplete or mistakable) initial question design, btw.

If you ask "what additions do you want: a.b.c.d.e or f" and only add "g: none of the above" five days later, 90% of the people who will ever vote in the thread won't have had the option to choose g, implying that the majority of people want several additions (a-f) whereas it truely only means that everyone who wanted no additions either hasn't voted at all of has voted for another option because there was no option g when they voted.

That's why I personally consider most of the latest votes pointless and non-representative at best.

[SteveP]

What's wrong with changing your vote if a better option comes along? That's the whole point of a poll. It's for fun; it's not statistically significant. Hinterland is probably not going to pay much attention to polling results but this is for fun. An example is someone had a poll for manufactured food to be added to the game. There were lots of suggestions but the poll was never updated with the new ideas.

Any poll I've seen mostly resets all votes to zero when the poll is modified so that everyone has a chance to revote. In this case, people drift in and out of the forum so we can just leave the old votes as they were and it does no harm.

Life is like that; new possibilities open up. You should be able to change your mind. Otherwise you would have to create new polls and delete old polls. Is that what you guys want me to do? This is not a democracy and it's not an election either. It's for fun. Cheese and Spam on a cracker!

Next you will complain if I delete your favourite poll and replace it with a clone with new and better options. Life changes: ADAPT! (or perish, tee hee)

[aside] Doomed I tell you; we are all doomed! No one gets out of this game alive!

The point is, the forum is designed so that polls can be modified. It doesn't currently let us change our votes. So we ask them to change that. Seriously, polls are a useful way of gathering and consolidating feedback. There is no freakin' way I want to have to clone a poll and neither do any of you. It defeats the purpose of CONSOLIDATION.

[SteveP]

[rant] If you guys want polls to be one time POLLs, then I would suggest you help work on this list by helping to flesh out all the options on wishlist that have already been mentioned in the over 2000 topic suggestions in 90 odd pages.

Some have suggested that the development team spend a lot of time on the wishlist and present us with polls. I have no objection if they feel that is a wise use of their time. I think this is entirely something that we FANs can do for our selves and Hinterland will of course have the benefit of seeing a consolidated fan response. Why do you think they bothered to put polls in the forum?

Anyway, I find the numerous ideas in the wishlist to be very interesting. Obviously we get factorial power brainstorming with more people involved.

Example one person has one idea. Two people have two ideas (2*1). Three people will have (3*2*1=3 factorial) due to the compounding effects of brainstorming. Each idea leads to other ideas. No single person should attempt to rely solely upon their own ideas. That's why we have the wishlist which is a brilliant way of engaging the community. Thank you [/rant]

[Scyzara]

1 hour ago, SteveP said:

Why do you think they bothered to put polls in the forum?

Oh, I believe the Devs just wanted to be nice and fulfill people's wishes because people asked for polls. Maybe they were also optimistic and believed people would mainly use the new function to create a few well-wrought and somehow meaningful polls instead of flooding everything with a plethora of non-representative "fun" polls that don't help them at all to determine what might  actually improve their game.

We have a special term in Germany for what you've been doing here on the forums during the last weeks, SteveP: "Aktionismus". Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a decent English translation for that and "actionism" seems to sth. entirely different.

What the term Aktionismus means is "Doing something just for the sake of doing something without caring about its relevance, utility or consequences."

A perfect (and also non-political) example would e.g. be someone who "prepares" for a math exam in statistics by skimming five different math books about algebra instead of reading one good book about statistics thoroughly. Aktionismus gives you the feeling to address a problem, but in reality you're not addressing it at all.

The problem about Aktionismus is that it usually does more bad than good, even if it is done with the best intentions. Aktionismus doesn't help at all to solve actual problems, instead it rather distracts from the real problems by bringing up ostensible problems (or ostensible solutions for real problems).

I don't want to help you with your polls, because - in my very humble opinion - it is the very best to simply let the Devs do their job, give feedback about it after the release of new patches and remain either silent or at least "helpful" in between new patches. And helpful does in this context not mean trying to create as many polls with as many fancy new ideas as possible, but making a few, well-wrought suggestions.

 

[SteveP]

3 minutes ago, Scyzara said:

I don't want to help you with your polls, because - in my very humble opinion - it is the very best to simply let the Devs do their job, give feedback about it after the release of new patches and remain either silent or at least "helpful" in between new patches. And helpful does in this context not mean trying to create as many polls with as many fancy new ideas as possible, but making a few, well-wrought suggestions.

Your opinion is never humble Scyz. Just sayin' Why do you want to question other people's motives? Why do you prefer to be negative instead of contributing something useful?

Please note that I always include an option for "Don't care" on the polls.

[SteveP]

4 hours ago, nicko said:

Also adding extra options/choices to a poll shouldn't be allowed after users have started submitting. surely that would effect the results. seems crazy.

I have noticed this on some recent polls, the poll creator can add new options/questions to it?

Why does it seem crazy? Please elaborate your thought process. I have explained already, people are allowed to change their minds. We are allowed to evolve our ideas. Certainly the addition of new options is going to affect a poll. That's entirely the point. It's not a deficiency except for those with OCD. It would seem to me that permitting users to alter their votes is a good thing especially if they change their minds.

 

[Dirmagnos]

4 hours ago, SteveP said:

Your opinion is never humble Scyz. Just sayin' Why do you want to question other people's motives? Why do you prefer to be negative instead of contributing something useful?

Please note that I always include an option for "Don't care" on the polls.

Im with Scyzara on this one. All those polls, aside of being incompetent for most of the time, dont really do anything. And if i dont care, then why would i bother to vote for "i dont care" option ? You do polls just for the sake of polls and about polls.

This constant running around, that creates illusion of activity, without actually doing anything. Nobody will rally under your banner simply because you do not represent any1 but yourself.

There is hardly anything useful in all that commotion but flooding forum with pointless polls, that no1 cares about(and then feeling mighty offended by lack of interest). People post their ideas and suggestions, devs read them and take note. Acting like youre some kind of forum mod, whos job is to consolidate things just makes me wannt to shrug shoulders, not jump in.

[Patrick Carlson]

Just as a reminder: In this and all other threads, please keep commentary friendly, non-personal, and non-argumentative. 

Thank you!

--Patrick

[nicko]

14 hours ago, SteveP said:

Why does it seem crazy? Please elaborate your thought process. I have explained already, people are allowed to change their minds. We are allowed to evolve our ideas. Certainly the addition of new options is going to affect a poll. That's entirely the point. It's not a deficiency except for those with OCD. It would seem to me that permitting users to alter their votes is a good thing especially if they change their minds.

 

If a poll is adjusted then all prior votes should be reset back to zero. If that is what happens then that is good. I have no problem.