Polling System for Updates in Mapleroyals

I realized there has been a lot of controversy that came with Patch 65, about archmages being nerfed indirectly as well as pots and throwing star prices increasing.

A little background information first: I've been playing Old School Runescape for a long time now, and one of the things I really like about the game is the way the OSRS team goes about their updates and patches.

First, they release pre-update patch notes on their website showing what exactly they'll change or bring into the game, followed by a poll booth where players can access in-game and vote on every single change.

Spoiler: Example

The options are: "Yes", "No", and "Skip question"
An update would pass and be implemented in the next game patch if it has over 75% "Yes" votes.

In OSRS, when a game breaking update gets put into the poll, most of the times it will never pass, because for the most part, the community knows whats good for them. I'm not saying the same goes for Mapleroyals, but I have faith.
I personally believe this is a great system that comes with more pros than cons.

I think something like this would first of all make things easier for the Royals team in the sense that they are able to see what the community wants, therefore not having to deal with all the backlash or having to stay up with no sleep just observing. This also benefits a big majority of player base, as they had control over what changes.

I would like to hear what you guys, especially the mods think about this system being implemented into Mapleroyals.

Spoiler: My OSRS stats, for those of you who play/have played

 

Great idea. They should definitely implement this.

 

Agreed, being caught off guard is really frustrating if the community had more of a say with these things there would obviously be less complaints

 

Just want to point out, that most of what gets polled on OSRS is for new content (the expansion to Morytania for example). They don't regularly, if at all, poll for changes that would be equivalent to lowering spawns in Ulu or increasing the cost of potions. In fact, those sort of changes come in the form of integrity changes and are not polled.

 

I was not around in 2013 so I don't know how the player base was like, but I'm assuming it was a lot smaller than it is now? I have faith, more so now than back in 2013, that the community wouldn't make rash decisions.

As for taking advantage of upcoming changes, I feel that that isn't too bad a trade off, as not everyone will be doing it. This happens in almost every game, for example a new boss coming out in an MMORPG, prices of end game equips and consumables would increase prior to the release. There will always be players who are trying to make a profit. It is already happening currently with players taking advantage of others panicking about CS/WS prices.

To begin with, OSRS and Maplestory are two very different games. I brung up OSRS solely due to their polling system which I like a lot.

In regards to changing the spawn rates of Ulu maps, I actually consider this a pretty major change as they are some of the most populated maps in the whole game, no?

As for your argument, I did decide to look back at some previous OSRS polls to see if I could find some polls regarding not-so-major-changes, and there seems to be a good amount, actually a lot of them. If you look back at the previous polls you'll see what I mean. To name a few, I'm seeing changes such as "should splitting Coconuts, once the action has started, be automated?", "Should filling Watering Cans, once the action as started, be automated?", and the same changes for a few other items. These are pretty minor changes in my opinion.

 

Automatically filling watering cans is not comparable to adjusting potion prices or star prices.

We didnt automate selling items to an NPC.

 

My point was not to compare updates, like I said, OSRS and Maplestory are two very different games.

My point is, you say that OSRS polls new content most of the times instead of smaller updates such as changing spawn rates of Ulu maps or changing the prices of pots and stars (which again, I think are actually pretty big changes), so I brung up small changes that OSRS included into their polls.

 

I never said smaller updates lol.

The spawn rate of monsters in a map, the cost to recharge stars, that's not new content. This is why I used the morytania expansion as my example. New area, new quest, new items. Not changing existing quests or items, new.

In fact, the games are more comparable than you think- they've nerfed the drops to Zulrah a half dozen times, and it's very similar to what we did to equip drops/spawn rates- and the changes to Zulrah (changes being the keyword, not whether zulrah should be added in the first place) were not polled. Jagex lowered the drop rate as an integrity change.

 

I'd have to agree on your statement regarding the Zulrah changes, I have no further say on the topic.

My question now is, what is the overlook on the possibility of a polling system being implemented? What is your view on it as well as other mods who have seen this post?

 

We have actually polled updates in the past. We had a list of 4-5 things we were going to do and let people vote on which they wanted first. So it's not impossible, especially for new updates- the difference would be whether its stuff we already plan to do, or new stuff all together. Its an interesting idea either way, but I think its better suited for stuff like that, and not balance changes.

 

Fair enough.

 

I definitely see where you're coming from.

However, I wasn't really proposing the community giving out the suggestions and dictating the path Royals takes --- that would completely throw Royals off, turning it into your generic private server, but more so the Royals team ultimately decides a list of things they would like to work on and we as the community vote on what passes. This eliminates the possibility of your example of buffing Archer's damage over Night Lords, as the Royals team are very unlikely to poll something like that.

That being said, the forum post you shared is a pretty good example, it focuses on aspects of the game that needs some work and the team is able to see what the community wants. If we could get polls like that consistently, then I think this system would do the server pretty well.

Regarding your worries about not all players being able to vote, the voting could be conducted in-game via an NPC in the FM. A requirement could also be added such as character must be level 50+ and only once per account or even IP address. I don't know how difficult of a task that is, but I'm sure its possible if they really wanted to go through with this.

 

I have a friend who grinds OS quite hard.

From what I hear from these polls, that the different factions of play-styles generally hate each other: eg: mains, skillers, PKers.

There’s already this divide between the player base without a community voting system, I’d rather not break it up more than it already is.

Some of our communities: Farmers, Social Players, New/Veteran Players, Ironman, Merchers, etc.

Lets say we had a thread about lowering the damage on HT by like 3k. What that would most likely result in:
-Easier for people to start HTing

Some consequences would include:
-People who grinded countless hours to afford their wash
-More books/HTP sellers on the market

In my opinion, it would start some internal rift within the community based off if the vote went thru or not.

I would rather keep it the way it is right now. The Admins/Matt create updates based on their discretion and what they think is a good update, and if it isn’t, the player base banding together making memes and a flood of feedback threads uniting to try to change things for the better.

 

I disagree with this idea. As mentioned by Matt, players can take advantages of pre-update information and nullify the changes staff want to bring to the server.

 

I think people misinterpret the use of Polls. They shouldn't be used or viewed as "okay, everyone voted for this so let's do it!" type of thing. Polls should generally be used as an idea of what the community(or small subset of) is thinking/feeling. The Staff/Devs don't need to 100% follow the Poll results as discretion should be used wisely.

 

Exactly I agree.