The "silent majority" argument may be a fallacy

In recent interviews and posts (and some older ones) of mostly Chris Wilson talking about their internal processes and discussions, he talks about how they have a large playerbase that doesn't post on forums or reddit or whereever... and this "silent majority" loves the new content and it's only the vocal minority that's speaking up...

this may be a fallacy for a number of reasons.

- There's no way to tell if a given player actually enjoys a given piece of content without directly asking that player via an interview or survery or similar means. They are called the "silent" majority for a reason. The only logical conclusion you can make is that the player is satisfied with the content to the point that he/she isn't at the point of posting negative feedback on the forums.

- Players that "enjoy" or "are happy" with the content shouldn't be treated as the same as players who are indifferent. The reason is because these two sets are fundamentally different in an evaluation of player feedback. let's say 90% of the playerbase is indifferent and 5% are happy. Is that worse feedback than if 90% of players are happy and 5% are indifferent? I think that you can objectively say that the second case is better feedback, because there is much more work that could be done to improve the content in the first case to make players more happy.

- active participation in content isn't an indication that players enjoy the content. Sure, if a player has run a piece of content a thousand times, a possible conclusion is that players loves that piece of content, but that's not necessarily true. It could just be that piece of content is the most efficient or compulsory and there's no alternative. For example the labyrynth... if you don't run that content, you won't get your ascendency class or good enchantment on your gear. Sure, lots of players are participating, but a lot may be hating the process.

- A "vocal minority" is different from the general consensus of the majority. The number people who post on forums, reddit, etc will always be a minority. But saying that vocal minority is wrong because of fact that it's a minority is incorrect... If you have the set of players who are unhappy with a piece of content and the set of players who post on forums, it's impossible to say the relation between these two sets without asking all the players their thoughts on the content. And It is also incorrect to say that the vocal minority can be treated as a statistical sample of the silent majority due to the assumptions that statistical analysis has on sets of data.

- There is poor communication between the "silent majority" and GGG. There arent any official mass player surverys (from what i've read), polls, or anything. So chris's statements such as "we have hundreds of thousands of players who really enjoy this content" is incorrect. All he can say is "we have hundreds of thousands of players who actively participate and don't complain"

TLDR: The silent majority may not be as happy as they appear to be even if theyre actively participating in content. There should be more surverys, polls, etc so GGG gets more feedback from this silent majority. Look at oldschool runescape for example. They have in game polls that a significant portion of players participate in.

AION have/had (i dont know cause i dont play it anymore) ingame pools to rate the events that give rewards

"

marcos459 wrote:

AION have/had (i dont know cause i dont play it anymore) ingame pools to rate the events that give rewards

yeah, that would be a great way to survey players who don't post on forums.

Everything you said is correct. I give it two more posts before trolls come in with both guns blazing firing at strawmen.

pretty much the arguments ive been using in my own post about that same topic

hard to use logic against people that are blind by love

Far too much has been read into this one statement. Chris is a salesman. He's not bound by law to be 100% honest or truthful about his product. He can make statements that are hotly debated without having to back them up statistically.

In the end, it doesn't matter if he's right or wrong. He's putting out PoE and we can play it or not. Choose for yourself.

"

IMSilver wrote:

- active participation in content isn't an indication that players enjoy the content. Sure, if a player has run a piece of content a thousand times, a possible conclusion is that players loves that piece of content, but that's not necessarily true. It could just be that piece of content is the most efficient or compulsory and there's no alternative. For example the labyrynth... if you don't run that content, you won't get your ascendency class or good enchantment on your gear. Sure, lots of players are participating, but a lot may be hating the process.

this part rules because i'm imagining someone just running lab over and over twelve hours a day with gritted teeth, hating every second of it but unable to stop

Even if only 30% of players liked the lab, it still shouldn't be removed.

Fair points. But I don't think we would hear GGG publicly admit they made significant mistakes with the lab.

"

Jonmcdonald wrote:

Even if only 30% of players liked the lab, it still shouldn't be removed.

This!

It matters not one bit how much of the OP is correct or not. There's far more than enough people who, at least, don't mind running Lab that there's no reason to make any significant changes.