Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General How should a series of community polls be structured for the purpose of gauging community feedback?

Camembert! etc. Actually I prefer Roquefort, but y'know.

Ahem. Where was I? Oh yeah, polls should now be available to all forum members in both topics and their replies. Do let me know if there are any problems...

Testing out the new poll-as-a-reply feature...

Schrödinger's Poll: did it work? multiple choice, up to 2 choices
	Yes
	No
	Maybe
	Here for the results
	I have not observed the results
	Here to find out how the cat is doing
Votes accepted starting: 17/04/21 05:17 AM
View Results

Huh. Well, this thread already paid off in a big way, it seems. When I envisioned a poll system for this forum, I thought it'd work like most forums where there's just one central poll held throughout the entire thread. But putting them into posts allows for the possibility for someone to run multiple polls at once in the same thread. Which might make this place actually better for what I have in mind, at least in terms of neatly organizing the results.

But yeah, I mostly choose Reddit because it has the largest observable community by far, and while holding the poll on this forum would be nice, realistically most BG3 subreddit users won't have forum accounts, while most people are far more likely to have Reddit accounts by this point.

Of course, this also carries the risk of some troll siccing a bunch of bots on the Reddit poll too, but what can you even do at that point?

I am not sure Larian is truly listening to feedback. They seem to be too busy following their "roadmap".

Thankfully the mod community is growing.

With the evolution of motion capture technology, I can see fan made characters and story content easily trumping the over-budget voice actors in time.

How long is not even guessable. The key will be the affordability of motion capture equipment and software; but I can see the day when amateur actors Take a road trip to a fan made "basement" studio to film a Teams planned and rehearsed set of scenes.

I know this is probably not feasible, but I would have liked a poll where concrete ALTERNATIVES are offered. To be honest, I think most people are about as imaginative as your average rock and will likely be "fine" or "okay" with many aspects because they simply can't imagine anything better.

For instance:

ALT. FLANKING: Friendly/enemy AI automatically pivot towards a single flanking enemy even when it's not their turn to act. A second threat is needed to flank (and gain flanking bonus). Bonus: More realistic, balanced and immersive combat.

ALT. *RNG* IMPLEMENTATION: Implement a more complex combat feedback/animation system where misses due to dexterity, shields, and armor are shown as dodged, blocked, or deflected. This is addressing the psychological aspect to bad RNG/missing, where people likely would be more accepting of failure when it is shown as due to a skilled enemy as opposed to just the player's ineptitude/bad luck. Bonus: More varied and interesting combat.

ALT. WEAPON DIPPING: Implement any number of D&D 5e alternatives; cantrips like Booming Blade and Green-Flame Blade, alchemical fire coating flask, poison (expendable resources).

ALT. SHOVE: As 5e (requiring attack action). Rely on actual 5e like Repelling Blast, Thunderous Wave, implement magical item like a wand (expendable resource) with aforementioned spells/knockback effect, add to Druid Wild Shape/Polymorph shapes.

I refuse to participate in a poll that doesn’t have bacon as a choice.

Joking aside, I’m curious where this will lead and if it will even make a difference. Larian seems to be so dead set on their vision of the game.

Are they going to be actual polls, or the quasi-usual:

Yes, this needs to be changed.

No, I'm part of the problem.

Because I see a lot of those, or in that vein, where the agenda is more obvious.

@Seraphael: Well, the main purpose is to establish if the community feels there should be a change to begin with. Getting tied up in what the changes are going to be muddles the conversation until a presumed need for a change is established first.

@robertthebard: I mean, if you choose to interpret the options that way, that’s pretty much on you. It’s purely designed for three kinds of answers: Change the mechanic completely, modify the mechanic, or preserve it completely.

If anything, this heavily favors the current design.

Hi Spectralhunter, look here:
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=770154#Post770154

I really wanted to add bacon as a choice but then I changed my mine, only for this one here - okay ?

Alors Bonsoir Madame, c'est encore moi

I was wondering if you could add the option, when creating a post, to allow people to add other options in the post ? An example where this could be useful is, say I want to create a poll about "which class would you like to see next", then I name 4 classes but forget 2 classes (sub-classes). Someone else might add the other 2 - "IF" the option is checked when creating the post.

What's your favorite cheese, I name 5 you add 5 more ..

I think I shall refrain from attempting to employ my rather questionable French language skills in reply! Apart from the very basic stuff I learnt at school, all I really know are some fairly rude words a thoughtful French chap passed on to me.

Cheese: I'm going to be boring and say cheddar. But the stuff actually from Cheddar; which isn't orange. I'm currently enjoying a rather nice smoked cheddar from... well, Glastonbury, but it's fairly near Cheddar. Of course there's much rivalry between English and French cheesiness which is why I mentioned Roquefort, possibly my 2nd favourite.

Er anyway. Polls! I noticed that there seems to be an absence of any means of changing polls once they've been submitted to the Poll Manager which is rather annoying, especially for people like me who usually don't notice a typo or that I've forgotten something until it's too late.

I've done some experimentation and it seems that it's possible to alter poll options after creation and even clear particular members' votes by meddling with the forum database directly, so there's a chance that's something we may consider doing on a discretionary basis; however, there is no guarantee it won't mess up the poll completely, and it would be offered on a strictly limited and ad hoc basis because I'm the only person who's foolhardy enough to attempt it. TL;DR: maybe.

Hi @Vometia,
okay, let's keep it to english, I can go english, French, Spanish and German - pick your cheese

I started a poll, see below, to your point I can't seem to be able to edit and add another option (none, someone doesn't like any actual classes, as an example for this poll).
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=770154#Post770154

Deleting the poll to add the option will be a no no, since we will loose all results and force to start over.

Anyway, let me know if you need more testing, I have other ideas for polls

Cheers !
P.S.: oh, you're from Oxford, that's the best university in the world ! I wish I could go ... (and we should all trust the AstraZeneca)