Clean Up Of Suggestions Forum: Polls For Country/route/loco Requests

Discussion in 'Suggestions' started by beefybeefy76, Jun 3, 2021.

  1. beefybeefy76

    beefybeefy76 New Member

    Joined:
    May 28, 2021
    Messages:
    10
    Likes Received:
    3
    The requests for locos and routes could be controlled by use of a polls outside of the suggestions forum. 1 person would then get 1 Vote on a country, 1 on a route, and 1 on a loco. Periodically, or when items are cleared, a new updated poll could be released.
    The amount of spamming, reiterations of the same request, and bulk requests make it hard to follow, and must make it difficult to compile the data by the forum moderators and staff to get any relevant feed back to the games company.
    It would be a bit of a chore to input the set lists/drop down choices initally, but it would make it easy to see which/country/route/loco were the most popular,and clean up the suggestions forum leaving it to be better utilised for other suggestions.
    These request polls could be managed within the suggestion forum, but would probably be better as a seperate section in the forum.
     
  2. Commiee

    Commiee Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 19, 2021
    Messages:
    523
    Likes Received:
    559
    While I agree it would clean up duplicate suggestions and make the process more systematic, that would require somebody from DtG to be dedicated to constantly checking new suggestions and adding them to the list. I don't think DtG has the resource to afford that kind of position.
    I do weekly checks and occasional facelifts to the list of suggestions mentioned in my signature, and it's the kind of work you would only do either if you're passionate about it or are paid for.
     
    Last edited: Jun 3, 2021
    • Like Like x 2
  3. trainsimplayer

    trainsimplayer Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 12, 2021
    Messages:
    4,533
    Likes Received:
    8,679
    I think personally the forums are "clean" enough as they are.
     
  4. stujoy

    stujoy Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 29, 2019
    Messages:
    6,478
    Likes Received:
    17,341
    The suggestions section is always going to be messy and a mixed bag of great and poor suggestions. They are forever items and shouldn’t be hidden, cleared or voted on with polls to keep good ones alive, as the quality of the suggestions should take care of that itself. They all get logged by DTG for numbers but it isn’t really used to decide what routes get made. Good quality suggestions will have more of an impact and don’t necessarily have to be the most popular either.

    Voting and polls cause more issues than they solve, are harder to evaluate and are easily manipulated in many ways. If the route you really want is not in the poll then you have no vote at all. It would be like only having the choice of buying records in the top 40, a horrifying situation for most people to find themselves in.
     
  5. Commiee

    Commiee Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 19, 2021
    Messages:
    523
    Likes Received:
    559
    I have to disagree.
    This is contradicted by DtG statements on almost every stream.
    I agree, but there is a tendency that shows better quality suggestions receiving more approval (e.g. the lowest-voted threads in the suggestions list linked in my signature also being ones with least info), so the two are complementary.
    I don't see any issues caused by polls that very usefully show where the community's interest is, such as https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/what-new-country-you-want-to-see-next-in-tsw2.35453/
    This is objectively not true - a single official poll for routes in a country, against dozens of occasionally created route suggestions - some of them duplicated, others semi-duplicated, some of them detailed, others not detailed but having more likes due to having been started years ago, etc, etc - the former is clearly easier to evaluate.
     
    Last edited: Jun 4, 2021
  6. stujoy

    stujoy Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 29, 2019
    Messages:
    6,478
    Likes Received:
    17,341
    They don’t really look at the suggestions to get ideas of what to make. They make that clear in the live streams. They use the suggestions as indicators as to where the interests lie but it’s rarely a major part of the decision making process for a specific individual route. If they end up not being able to choose between two routes they look at suggestions for those routes if there are any and see which might be more popular. You can check this out for yourself by cross-checking the routes that have been made against suggestions in the forum over the last few years. They cross over but they don’t match up.

    There is a big list in DTG’s hands compiled from many many sources over a long period of time and it is much bigger, more comprehensive and accurate than you could ever get from an online poll right now. Route suggestions get added to the list as they are posted. Polls are only a snapshot of a few people’s current preferences from a small list of choices over a short time period and do not accurately indicate the big picture, and would certainly get nowhere near what DTG already have in their possession. A poll cannot have enough answers to get reasonable results with the potential data set that is ‘every railway ever made’. A ‘best of’ poll might make interesting reading for forum members but it doesn’t really help DTG. There would have to be so many choices in a poll for it to cover every route that could possibly be made and you would then have to expect that people would go and find all the listed suggestions somewhere and read up on them to find out which route they would prefer.

    The famous routes are always going to be top and then it becomes a vote by geography with everyone voting for their local route because people won’t go and research the suggestions at the time the poll is made. DTG don’t need telling that WCML or Shinkansen would be popular, they already know that from being interested in trains themselves. Nobody needs to suggest that they would be popular in TSW. DTG employ people to gather quality data (from suggestions, social media comments, stream chat and elsewhere) and interpret it and still don’t base all their decisions just on what would be the most popular. A route has to be feasible, interesting, able to be licensed and have reasonable access available for research. People within the company also probably have enough ideas themselves to last a decade or more, without any reference to what we want. Those are the routes that are most likely to get made, and they would sell too. Things don’t have to be the most popular to be good, and polls only ever show what is the most popular choice from a small set, or the choice that needs the least amount of thought, just like a bad route suggestion needs little thought.
     
  7. Commiee

    Commiee Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 19, 2021
    Messages:
    523
    Likes Received:
    559
    Well that's goalpost-moving - whether it's a major or a less-major element was not the original point. The fact is, they ask players to make suggestions and upvote existing ones so that the end result is factored in decision-making for development.
    But a time-limited poll from months or even years ago that is now closed is not what the suggestion of this thread is.
    That's only a technical issue - you can have a number of polls chained to provide enough answers.
     
    Last edited: Jun 4, 2021

Share This Page