Judgement Poll - The Final RPG vs cRPG Forum Discussion

[evdk]

So you only had this poll to troll anyone voting on it? Wow, it's like I am really voting for a political party or president in real life: nothing changes.

You actually expected that this would influence anything?

 

[Roguey]

You just described Divinity 2.

No grindan areas, finite supply of enemies only.

Same applies to Dragon Age, both of 'em. I guess I could have pointed out that part of his erroneous description but meh.

 

[Ulminati]

Well, you had it changed from goldbox classics | everything else into PC RPGs | Console RPGs | Weaboo shit. At most you're looking at a non weaboo | weaboo split since a majority seems to want to keep the japcrap forum seperate.

But at any rate it's not my decision and I'm pretty content with the current split

 

[Forest Dweller]

There's already a forum for JRPGs, and it's called General Gaming.

 

[DraQ]

There's already a forum for JRPGs, and it's called General Gaming.

I don't want filthy JPGs in my GG.

 

[Jasede]

I don't want you in my RPG Codex, do you see me complaining?

 

[Marsal]

I don't want you in my RPG Codex, do you see me complaining?

You're missing the obvious, bro. Being a weaboo fag makes your opinions irrelevant.

 

[Metro]

Please, God, just keep jRPG separate.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

You know, despite all the complaints, I think this is working out.

asper: I believe the forum names - especially for jRPG and the Console forums - will attract the appropriate type of poster to them.

So you only had this poll to troll anyone voting on it? Wow, it's like I am really voting for a political party or president in real life: nothing changes.

Many people make the mistake of thinking polls should tell you what to do. Polls are really only an indication as to how many people are yet to be won over - or how many people care and how much they care about it. When we first polled on this issue, over 70% of people wanted to keep the single forum. With the new proposal, that dropped 12%. But you'll also note that the first half of this thread is still people complaining about "what defines Classic".

So we learned that "Classic" vs "non-Classic" was not the way to go.

However, we can also see that about half as many people voted for Console vs PC split as voted to keep everything in one forum. Of course it's not a majority, but it shows the idea had a fair amount of support - and was much better defined than "Classic" vs "non-Classic". We also had a small number of people who wanted to keep some sort of a split, around 80 votes for a split vs 110 for a single forum.

So we learned that the idea of a split has a reasonable level of popular support.

We can also see that most people ignored the jRPG option. While a majority voted in favour to keep it, most really don't care. So we learned that most people don't care about the jRPG forum, but if pushed, some would rather keep it around. And if the rest don't really care, then they're mostly indifferent to whatever happens.

The discussion in this thread also virtually stopped dead the minute I made the actual change to "Console vs PC" (ignoring of course, those who still continued to raise "Classic" as an issue). From that, we can infer that most, while they care, aren't so up in arms that they immediately revolted. From the discussion in this thread we can also see that most people raise legitimate concerns around how a split would work, whether it would be confusing and what game goes where - that most complaints against the split are of the "it wouldn't work" nature, rather than being "it's just a bad idea". That, coupled with the support, warrants a trial. That way we can see whether those concerns are born out, or whether - after some initial teething issues - things settle down.

Now - it's still early days - but since I posted yesterday saying we'd keep the current layout, the replies have been "cRPG is now readable", "Not too bad", balanced with a handful of complaints and some mostly irrelevant comments. IE: It didn't start World War III, nor spawn a myriad of "merge the forums back!" topics.

If we read the forums themselves, we can see that the jRPG forum is getting some activity - despite complaints it would be dead. And we have people who genuinely seem happy to have the forum - both those who wish to discuss the games they like, and others who want to avoid them. We can also see that the cRPG and Console forums are also working reasonably well. Again, it's still early days but it's failed to create an overwhelming protest movement. With most either accepting inevitability or learning to adjust.

At this stage, I'm happy to let things sit. And I'm confident that if I ran a poll in a month or so's time asking whether to merge or keep the split, that the results would be a lot closer to 50/50 - possibly with a higher number of people not caring and even a slight victory for the split. The "Classic" voters and "some other split" would likely merge in favour of "cRPG vs console", some of those who voted "keep it as one" may have been won over (because they voted back when the forums were still split "Classic vs non-Classic") and more people would be indifferent because after seeing it in action, it doesn't really matter to them now. IE: I doubt there's going to be an increase in the number of people who want to re-merge everything.

... unless of course, we have some major fuck-up, with ongoing confusion about what goes where.

 

[made]

Or maybe people just can't be arsed to continue arguing about it because it's obvious you're going to ignore them and do whatever you want anyway?

Forum sucks now. Nothing was gained by this arbitrary split (cept appeasing OCD tards) it's just annoying to browse now, let alone post.

 

[Turjan]

Or maybe people just can't be arsed to continue arguing about it because it's obvious you're going to ignore them and do whatever you want anyway?

Forum sucks now. Nothing was gained by this arbitrary split (cept appeasing OCD tards) it's just annoying to browse now, let alone post.

Also, this poll was supposed to run for a week. It doesn't make much sense to repeat the same argument over and over if the poll is supposed to run for a specific time.

Trying to keep prestigious PC games like Diablo 3 from being contaminated by popamole like Fallout: New Vegas still doesn't make more sense now than a week ago.

 

[Antagonist]

I don't really care about the Codex' endless quest to answer what constitutes an RPG but this division annoys me because I now have to check 2 additional forums each time I visit this place.

 

[Achilles]

Well I like it. I've been testing the new forums to see if I'd find specific games at the subforum that I would expect to and sure enough, they're where they should be. It's a clear distinction.

 

[DwarvenFood]

I like the percentages in the poll:

Keep it all in one "General RPG Discussion Forum" as we had before.
112 vote(s) 58.9%
Computer vs Console (MMXI's proposal).
49 vote(s) 25.8%
As it is now, a "Classic / Golden Era" forum with a "Modern cRPG Forum".
21 vote(s) 11.1%
Some other combination or addition (which you can suggest below).
12 vote(s) 6.3%
Whatever happens, keep the jRPG Forum.
44 vote(s) 23.2%
Ditch the jRPG Forum.
30 vote(s) 15.8%
KingComrade!! Discussion.
23 vote(s) 12.1%

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Multiple votes are allowed.

 

[Stelcio]

Many people make the mistake of thinking polls should tell you what to do. Polls are really only an indication as to how many people are yet to be won over - or how many people care and how much they care about it.

So many people (admins in this case) make mistake of doing things people would rather have done instead of doing things as they please? I see your point...

So we learned that the idea of a split has a reasonable level of popular support.

Still less reasonable level than the idea of keeping it all together has. Nothing here makes it a better idea then.

We can also see that most people ignored the jRPG option. While a majority voted in favour to keep it, most really don't care. So we learned that most people don't care about the jRPG forum, but if pushed, some would rather keep it around. And if the rest don't really care, then they're mostly indifferent to whatever happens.

If you imply that people who don't care about jRPG subforum also don't care about the main division, then you are utterly mistaken. Or maybe you want to be as it helps you prove your point.

The discussion in this thread also virtually stopped dead the minute I made the actual change to "Console vs PC" (ignoring of course, those who still continued to raise "Classic" as an issue). From that, we can infer that most, while they care, aren't so up in arms that they immediately revolted.

Well, you seem to coincidentally not see things that make your point harder to prove. There were arguments about pc vs console division, there were some valid statements against it made by myself, mondblut and some others, who I can't recall right now, but can be easily found in this and the earlier thread. Also what Turjan and made said.

From the discussion in this thread we can also see that most people raise legitimate concerns around how a split would work, whether it would be confusing and what game goes where - that most complaints against the split are of the "it wouldn't work" nature, rather than being "it's just a bad idea".

Well, duh, it's a bad idea because it wouldn't work! Also no point in raising personal preference argument against people who don't share these preferences nor care about them. It's obvious that if we state some arguments against it then we don't like it and want it gone. Yeah, we are raging because we now have to browse through 2 or 3 separate subforums instead of one, but you. Don't. Fucking. Care.

Now - it's still early days - but since I posted yesterday saying we'd keep the current layout, the replies have been "cRPG is now readable", "Not too bad", balanced with a handful of complaints and some mostly irrelevant comments.

Now that's just typical propaganda BS!

IE: It didn't start World War III, nor spawn a myriad of "merge the forums back!" topics.

Yeah, it didn't. You silenced the outrage with hope that poll will change things back to normal. But as they say: it's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes. Some credit this quote to Joseph Stalin, btw.

Again, it's still early days but it's failed to create an overwhelming protest movement. With most either accepting inevitability or learning to adjust.

I hope it will. After all, accepting inevitability or learning to adjust is what led to settling the communism for good in Eastern Europe. It took almost 50 years for people to realize they have to rise against it. Of course this case is nowhere near communism, but it just proves that people adjusted to much worse things so it means shit and certainly not that it's a good idea.

Also, stating that it's "inevitable" just proves that you are going full-scale high-handed here making full use of illusoric social support.

No point in further quoting of propaganda BS, so I'll just repeat two things I wrote earlier:

It's an attempt to justify personal taste execution with some far-fetched classifications.

And question for you, DarkUnderlord, which you didn't answer:

Are you implying there were some inappropriate types of posters in old GRPG? If yes, how exactly? If not, what's the point of dividing things?

Again, WHAT'S THE POINT?!

 

[Infinitron]

Could it be possible to hack in a read-only "virtual forum" that aggregates the contents of the three RPG forums?

 

[PorkaMorka]

Sure, checking two or three forums is more inconvenient than just checking one forum.

But if you want to read about popamole or JRPGs then you should have to suffer a bit.

 

[Stelcio]

Sure, checking two or three forums is more inconvenient than just checking one forum.

But if you want to read about popamole or JRPGs then you should have to suffer a bit.

Except the fact that there are popamole in CRPG and there are proper RPGs in MfC. Where is your God now?!

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Many people make the mistake of thinking polls should tell you what to do. Polls are really only an indication as to how many people are yet to be won over - or how many people care and how much they care about it.

So many people (admins in this case) make mistake of doing things people would rather have done instead of doing things as they please? I see your point...

So we learned that the idea of a split has a reasonable level of popular support.

Still less reasonable level than the idea of keeping it all together has. Nothing here makes it a better idea then.

Your mistake is to assume the poll is a valid representation of all those who read and post in the forums in question, and whether or not that aligns with the values the staff see and the direction they'd like to see the site take. We have 800 active members visiting every day, and around 3,000 - 13,000 guests - depending on how you run the numbers. And the poll is self-selecting (you have to care about it enough and think to visit Site Feedback to comment on it).

In other words: The poll isn't the be all and end all of everyone's opinion. Not saying it shouldn't be taken into consideration mind you, just saying it would be wrong to simply go "well the poll says that, so that's what we'll do". Someone is also always going to be upset, no matter what decision is made. If I took the 58% for example and merged everything, I'd have 42% of the forum disagreeing with that decision. A number that is close enough to be able to say "half the forum".

We can also see that most people ignored the jRPG option. While a majority voted in favour to keep it, most really don't care. So we learned that most people don't care about the jRPG forum, but if pushed, some would rather keep it around. And if the rest don't really care, then they're mostly indifferent to whatever happens.

If you imply that people who don't care about jRPG subforum also don't care about the main division, then you are utterly mistaken. Or maybe you want to be as it helps you prove your point.

No, I'm saying 110 people voted to merge everything and then didn't bother voting specifically for the "ditch the jRPG forum" option - which was the whole point the poll was multiple choice. Might've been better if I'd just added more options that allowed that vote to be expressed, but I thought I'd try this multi-vote thing.

The discussion in this thread also virtually stopped dead the minute I made the actual change to "Console vs PC" (ignoring of course, those who still continued to raise "Classic" as an issue). From that, we can infer that most, while they care, aren't so up in arms that they immediately revolted.

Well, you seem to coincidentally not see things that make your point harder to prove. There were arguments about pc vs console division, there were some valid statements against it made by myself, mondblut and some others, who I can't recall right now, but can be easily found in this and the earlier thread. Also what Turjan and made said.

All of which I addressed with the comment "most complaints against the split are of the 'it wouldn't work' nature".

Re: what made said about "maybe people just can't be arsed to continue arguing about it because it's obvious you're going to ignore them and do whatever you want anyway?", I covered with my comments about how much people cared. Think of it this way: I have someone who really, really, really wants a donut. And I have someone who's fighting against that person getting a donut. I say "I'm thinking of giving him a donut". The person who's against this, at that point, gives up and goes home. Question: How much did they really care?

Seriously, the biggest complaint is "I have to browse two forums now". Coming from people who already have many thousands of posts across multiple forums.

From the discussion in this thread we can also see that most people raise legitimate concerns around how a split would work, whether it would be confusing and what game goes where - that most complaints against the split are of the "it wouldn't work" nature, rather than being "it's just a bad idea".

Well, duh, it's a bad idea because it wouldn't work!

There's a difference between @Turjan's point as to what this split is trying to accomplish, vs "people will get confused". Turjan raises a valid point (the answer to which is: to encourage discussion about specific types of games and have those discussions in their own forums, so they can be easily located by people who are particularly interested in them - without having to go to page 2 or try and find it in walls of new topics), where-as "it won't work" is purely speculative.

What happens if it does work? That argument completely disappears.

Also no point in raising personal preference argument against people who don't share these preferences nor care about them. It's obvious that if we state some arguments against it then we don't like it and want it gone. Yeah, we are raging because we now have to browse through 2 or 3 separate subforums instead of one, but you. Don't. Fucking. Care.

Taking your "browsing multiple forums is bad!" schtick to the nth degree - I could simply merge all threads into a single forum. But that would suck, wouldn't it? Why? Because you would have to skip over all that politics bullshit you don't want to read, the forum would move too fast and the topics you want to read would be buried underneath the avalanche of all the inane shit.

So I have a choice: I have people who want to completely ignore that content and skip over it - and others who want to read all of it. Well, guess what? With a forum split, the people who want to read all of it can still read all of it. They are virtually unaffected by this split, other than the mild inconvenience of clicking open another tab (Like, no really. Are you seriously complaining about the effort required to click another tab? How on earth do you people tolerate reading the news forum? Do you want news to just be posted into a single merged RPG forum in the future?) - and that's assuming they don't use the "What's New" and the "Watched Forums" feature - both of which combine multiple forums into one easily readable list and achieve almost precisely what you want.

... And now, people who just want cRPG's can get just those. Again, I have two user groups. One of which has multiple features at their disposal to overcome their major complaint ("I have to open another forum!"), while another user group had no such option. They now have that option, without any major inconvenience to the other group. Now, this is a bad thing because...?

IE: It didn't start World War III, nor spawn a myriad of "merge the forums back!" topics.

Yeah, it didn't. You silenced the outrage with hope that poll will change things back to normal. But as they say: it's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes. Some credit this quote to Joseph Stalin, btw.

Again, it's still early days but it's failed to create an overwhelming protest movement. With most either accepting inevitability or learning to adjust.

I hope it will. After all, accepting inevitability or learning to adjust is what led to settling the communism for good in Eastern Europe. It took almost 50 years for people to realize they have to rise against it. Of course this case is nowhere near communism, but it just proves that people adjusted to much worse things so it means shit and certainly not that it's a good idea.

These two paragraphs seem to contradict each other.

Also, stating that it's "inevitable" just proves that you are going full-scale high-handed here making full use of illusoric social support.

I meant their major complaint that "it won't work" was incorrect - and that it does seem to actually be working.

No point in further quoting of propaganda BS, so I'll just repeat two things I wrote earlier:

It's an attempt to justify personal taste execution with some far-fetched classifications.

And question for you, DarkUnderlord, which you didn't answer:

Are you implying there were some inappropriate types of posters in old GRPG? If yes, how exactly? If not, what's the point of dividing things?

Again, WHAT'S THE POINT?!

See above.

 

[evdk]

Could it be possible to hack in a read-only "virtual forum" that aggregates the contents of the three RPG forums?

You could use the "What's New?" feature and set it up to only display the three RPG forums -> http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?account/whats-new

 

[Antagonist]

Sure, checking two or three forums is more inconvenient than just checking one forum.

But if you want to read about popamole or JRPGs then you should have to suffer a bit.

A 167 pages Diablo 3 thread speaks for itself.

 

[Cassidy]

Why not split the news too?

Or at least tag them as JRPG, CRPG and POPAMOLE?

 

[Jasede]

Perhaps also split JRPG into first-person and tactical and CRPG into blobber, C&C and other. Popamole could be cover-shooter, action RPG and Bioware/Witcher. More forums to check! Woop.

 

[Stelcio]

The poll isn't the be all and end all of everyone's opinion. Not saying it shouldn't be taken into consideration mind you, just saying it would be wrong to simply go "well the poll says that, so that's what we'll do". Someone is also always going to be upset, no matter what decision is made. If I took the 58% for example and merged everything, I'd have 42% of the forum disagreeing with that decision. A number that is close enough to be able to say "half the forum".

Still, this 42% of disagreeing folks are the folks that mostly didn't have any problem with GRPG or they didn't state it in any significant form. Even MMXI, who originally came up with pc-console division, said he wouldn't mind merging it back. That's what some people prefer, but that's not the most suiting solution for the users as a whole. And it's not even consistent and rocksolid-based, as GRPG was. There are some crossplatform RPGs with heavy PC mod support, there are console RPGs that are closer to what you consider "a PC RPG" than some of today's PC RPGs and there are PC RPGs which are consolized to the point that console port could be made just by turning down some graphic effects, there are games inside one serie that go to different subforums. This division may be cool in theory, but in practise it's flawed and retarded. In opposite to GRPG. So we have one flawed option with minority (even though significant) for it but mostly not minding going the second option, and we have that second one pretty solid option with majority prefering it over any change. The choice is obvious.

Re: what made said about "maybe people just can't be arsed to continue arguing about it because it's obvious you're going to ignore them and do whatever you want anyway?", I covered with my comments about how much people cared. Think of it this way: I have someone who really, really, really wants a donut. And I have someone who's fighting against that person getting a donut. I say "I'm thinking of giving him a donut". The person who's against this, at that point, gives up and goes home. Question: How much did they really care?

So this is about who cares more suddenly, not about what is better? Maybe it's like MOST Codex users don't give too much shit about what happens here? But that doesn't mean things should go just like few that care more want to.

Turjan raises a valid point (the answer to which is: to encourage discussion about specific types of games and have those discussions in their own forums, so they can be easily located by people who are particularly interested in them - without having to go to page 2 or try and find it in walls of new topics), where-as "it won't work" is purely speculative.

And what's this "specific type of games"?? PC games aren't that distinctive from console games. I made some examples above. That's the whole point - it won't work because your division exists only in your fantasies. You ended up accomplishing nothing beside boosting your butthurt egos, butthurting some other people, making even more people's lives a bit more difficult and creating a mere illusion of refined classification.

Taking your "browsing multiple forums is bad!" schtick to the nth degree - I could simply merge all threads into a single forum. But that would suck, wouldn't it? Why? Because you would have to skip over all that politics bullshit you don't want to read, the forum would move too fast and the topics you want to read would be buried underneath the avalanche of all the inane shit.

Browsing multiple forums is bad when it doesn't serve any actual purpose. And here it doesn't. Why? I wrote it two times already in this post. Because your division is not based on anything solid, it's just "games we like vs games we don't like" which (coincidentally or not) ALMOST fits the pc-console division.

One of which has multiple features at their disposal to overcome their major complaint ("I have to open another forum!"), while another user group had no such option. They now have that option, without any major inconvenience to the other group.

Except they still don't because of what I wrote three times already here. It's just a mere illusion.

These two paragraphs seem to contradict each other.

How exactly?

I meant their major complaint that "it won't work" was incorrect - and that it does seem to actually be working.

Illusion, ILLUSION! It does not work, it cannot work. The criterium does not work out for the purpose.