Forums as a player sampling?

How representative do you think the forums are of the player base as a whole?

What percentage of players do you think look at / post to the forums?
Do you think forum posters represent a fair sampling of the total players? - in terms of casual/hardcore, experience with mmo's, # characters, what they think of the game overall .. whatever

The statistician/sociologist in me is just curious.

Game forums are almost always a biased minority. Majority of players don't care to visit the forums and do so only when there's a serious enough reason to.

Very minor. Generally the people that have something to complain about will show up here, while the people who have no problems won't leave any feedback. That's usually how it goes.

i'm wanting to say the past player poll showed only about 3% of the games population comes into the forums and only close to 5% go on the lodestone. the question is does the 3-5% accurately represent the overall players in the game in general?

that's one answer i do not have. i know the majority of the people i speak to in game feels one way, but that's only people in the circles i play with. i cannot say whether the circle of players i play with is related to the general attitude of the players that started arr.

The forums are filled with a small group of people, evenly split between those who love the game but want it to change for the better, and those who love the game and want it to stay the way it is.

The people who outright hate the game, or those mildly satisfied with it usually don't come on the forums at all.

There is no way to give any numbers, but as far as representation is concern, I don't believe the forum population is accurate.


As someone said, it would make sense that the population encountering problems within the game would be more representated than the players having no grievance.

Other common reasons for players to visit the forums:

- Those seraching for "technical advice" concerning game mechanics: people interested in maximise their performance, their exploration of game mechanics, and interested in getting other players input
- Those very invested community-wise (though these forums don't have a very strong sense of community, there are only a few threads sharing ingame practices/ideas/etc... and the server forums are mostly filled with FC ads; I don't believe this part of the players is very well represented on these forums as I've seen in other MMOs)
- Enthuisiasts who want to share their hopes/fantasies about the game (all those suggestions/what if/future-prediction threads that are quite numerous here, though it is to be expected on such a new game)


The practice of using forums in itself tells something about the players in question; I don't believe it can ever be taken as a "fair sample" of any game population, except if it is a integral part of the game experience by design.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kiroh

The people who outright hate the game, or those mildly satisfied with it usually don't come on the forums at all.

---

I'm not so sure about this. There may be a smaller percentage of these people, but those who post their opinions usually feel strongly about the game, one way or another. Indifference and hate are two different things, and the later is more likely to provoke a reaction than the former.

Don't underestimate the power of the forums. It should be troubling when there's a lot negative threads. They play the game and can sense the general feel of players in their lses/fc.

Very biased (negatively) small group of people.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by darkstarpoet1

i'm wanting to say the past player poll showed only about 3% of the games population comes into the forums and only close to 5% go on the lodestone. the question is does the 3-5% accurately represent the overall players in the game in general.

---

Agree with this. From everquest polls also from MMO dot com polls, only 5 % goes to the forum, and only 3 % of them makes a post.

The other 95% of players are flying blindly and never know whats going on in forums. A majority of them are casuals. So in my opinion, the forum is not a good representative because those who visit and makes a post are generally not casual player.

The casual player could not care about making a post because they just dont care about anything too much. Unless it hurts them and the game is too hard, and they just hop to another game without making a fuss. This is why this crowd is so dangerous because their demand is very elastic in economic terms.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hycinthus

The casual player could not care about making a post because they just dont care about anything too much. Unless it hurts them and the game is too hard, and they just hop to another game without making a fuss. This is why this crowd is so dangerous because their demand is very elastic in economic terms.

---

Hear, hear
Fear the silent majority!!! =)) =))

I like to stay informed with what is going on with the game at all times so I like to visit at least once every couple of days. I also like to help newer players with questions so they are not in the dark. I think the community both makes this game good and also makes it a pain in the ass sometimes.

As others have said, I too believe that the forums represent a very small fraction of the game community.

I think the forum users do not well represent the players of the game. English forums have a large amount of complaints and people expressing dissatisfaction, while in-game communities seem mostly positive about the game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyrinn

Game forums are almost always a biased minority. Majority of players don't care to visit the forums and do so only when there's a serious enough reason to.

---

This. This. This. This.

It's the percentage that feel their opinion on what they're experiencing is worth expressing. People who care enough about the game to let the company and players know how they feel.

I generally think that's a good sort of mindset to take.
Then again, I'm irrefutably biased.

SE could add feature like player can get a mount by write 1k feed back or 1k complain or 1k they love the game and make it 1/day as lockout feature and same comment & reason do not count

No matter how trivial players make the forums out to be S.E has been listening to some of the suggestions.

1) Withdraw issue in CT - check - implementation - failed
2) Rude behavior in dungeons - check - commendations - Semi failed
3) Housing prices - dunno haven't been paying attention
4) Cash shops - Selling Fantasia

etc etc

That's the reason why there's so much arguing on the forums because players don't want the devs to listen to the other side.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Doo

No matter how trivial players make the forums out to be S.E has been listening to some of the suggestions.
*snip*
That's the reason why there's so much arguing on the forums because players don't want the devs to listen to the other side.

---

That's exactly why I'm curious. If we on the forums are the "vocal minority" and the forums are where the devs are getting all the feedback/ideas, how well do we represent the desires of the majority of players? Particularly in terms of difficulty and content.
It sounds like the impression is that the people not on the forums are basically just "playing the game" (what a concept). The people on the forums are more interested in the "meta-game" - lore, contributing feedback, griping/praising, strategies/theorycrafting, vanity pictures...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mikedizzy

I also like to help newer players with questions so they are not in the dark.

---

.. and the occasional samaritan. :)

A member of my FC didn't know about the beast tribe quests until yesterday, which surprised me until I realized that if you didn't read the patch notes (or forum complaints) you'd only find them by looking for available quests in Gridania/Ul'dah. >_<

I visit forums generally to see what is going on. The stuff that get my attention the most are, over negative/postive threads.

2 things mainly get me involved. Latency and overall game acessibilty.

Most of the time will be rooting out white knights <- the real ones and looking for Lalafell and Miqo'tes.

While I don't believe that the forumers are an accurate representation of the ingame population, it doesn't mean that what they voice is only happening in their own point of view.
Usually, an ingame group of players will have a minority of posters amongst their ranks, but those posters also talk ingame, and share their ideas there, and get their ideas from what other people do/say ingame too.

So basically, each post on the forum actually represents several silent voices.


The variable here is the proportion.
There is a voice for about everybody ingame that reaches the forum. The ratio between different opinions however might differ from the ingame population, considering that a part of said population is less encline than the rest to go to the forums.


As for SE, well, they can only do with the information they have to get feedback. Part of it comes from the forum, but seriously, they probably giver more weight to money flows (and maybe they have ways to check some specific player behaviors? I know it exists in other places somewhat, and it would make sense, but no idea of the details of the practice).