Poll Results-86.9% Of Players Want Rollers Tweaked/removed

[Madotsuki]

Whats the sample size? We can't people who "do polls" and "check the warframe wiki" are a good measure of the ENTIRE population of warframe, can we?

Again, STATISTICS 101. READ MY OP POST FOR ONCE. I already explained why a 1000 sample size is more than enough to make an accurate prediction of the entire population. Have YOU ever done polls before?

[Cpl_Facehugger]

And we can get something fun to fight, and a new unit completely. And new and improved Rollers. Getting new units that may not even fill the specific roles that Rollers fulfill still doesn't justify removing them, especially before we even see the new units at all.

 

Do you just not understand that there are limited dev resources to go around? That time spent recoding roller behavior is time not spent coding actual new content?

 

We can't know that for certain unless it's implemented. Grineer shouldn't throw grenades the moment you duck behind a box. It should be an infrequent ability, at best, while Rollers can continue to do that, as well as chase Tenno in a much more effective fashion than Grineer units could ever hope to.

 

"If we can't know for certain unless it's implemented", then we can't know anything unless it's implemented. All these roller fixes you guys propose? We can't know if they're going to work. Come on man, that's basically a cop out argument.

 

Outright removal instead of tweaking isn't justified in the means provided. Nervos were terrible because they were too small and the stunlock was too much. Rollers are not nearly on the same level as Nervos were.

 

And you base this on what, exactly? Why are you the arbitrator of what is or isn't justified? Why not me? Or MJ? Or RealityMachina, or anyone else? Certainly the rest of those people I mentioned have provided much better arguments than the pro-roller side has.

 

I'm glad to hear your opinion on what is fun and what is mediocre, but it won't be identical to mine. To me, Lancers are mediocre. They are a yawn to fight. In my experience, trying to kill fast-moving Rollers is more challenging than stationary Grineer, and I derive my fun from being challenged. Which units in this game provide you with the most fun, anyway? Let's use that as a comparison, because other Grineer units don't present the same level of challenge that Roller agility provides, which is why I would also like them buffed to represent a more challenging experience.

 

To me, Lancers are the best part of the Grinner lineup. They're accurate high DPS shooters who use reasonably intelligent tactics, encouraging me to act aggressively to avoid being gunned down. Followed by heavy gunners and commanders, who both bring interesting mechanics into play. Then followed by seekers, who do the whole 'harassment' thing so much better than rollers. The important thing is that Grineer really work together very well. Each unit complements each other.

 

Except rollers. Never died to a roller, and never really seen them interact with other Grineer because I prioritize them. However, they've got no DPS (unlike lancers, gunners, troopers, commanders, etc). Just stunlock. No interesting mechanics. Just stunlock. Even replacing the stunlock with the suggested mechanics isn't going to produce something interesting - it's just going to produce something annoying to deal with on account of its speed and size. 

 

Making Rollers more engaging with different attacks and reducing their stagger mechanics would also provide them with more ways to challenge me.

 

Except you won't be challenged at all by them; if you have no trouble shooting rollers now, why would you have trouble shooting rollers when they have no stunlock going for them?

 

And it is inherently fun to shoot Rollers, in the same fashion as Grineer. You are telling me that you would prefer Rollers to flinch upon being hit? They already explode upon death, which is arguably just as satisfying as a Grineer dieing to gunshots. Even the 'visceral' reaction to death by edged weapons, while novel and entertaining at first, loses its awe and luster after the 100th time seeing it and hearing the death gurgle. If you're looking to be entertained by them dieing, try suggesting alternate ways for Rollers to expire; maybe give their death animations a few bits and pieces that fly out and abuse the physics engine a bit.

 

What are you talking about? Shooting Grineer and Rollers is totally different - Rollers just roll right towards you, rather than taking cover at range. Rollers also lack heads to target. As far as impact goes, what I'd like is for a roller to flinch if shot but not killed. It should have to veer off rather than continuing happily along its way. Normal grineer flinch if hit hard enough, so why not Rollers? (Because Rollers suck, that's why. And making them not suck is going to be labor intensive, such that you might as well just put that effort towards making something that doesn't suck from the beginning, rather than trying to salvage something that even its defenders admit sucks, with said defenders saying it could maybe be made to not suck.)

 

Because it would be better to just make them more fun. It might not work for you, but it will work for the many others that want Rollers but don't want them as they are.

 

Who exactly wants rollers? Maybe a dozen guys on a webforum? I mean rollers in particular, rather than the idea of "good enemy that's fun to fight." This really seems like a knee jerk defense of rollers to me, considering that you have no way of knowing how many people actually want to keep the rollers, out of those ~869 guys who said they wanted them gone or changed.

"Many others" is a claim you can't support.

 

"Strawman, huh? Okay then."

Do you know what a strawman is, Moonicus? Because what you just quoted wasn't one. It was a counterexample to show that your premise - "unit variety is inherently good" is flawed. I wasn't claiming that's what you're saying, I was saying that's the exact sort of thing your logic enables.

 

"Unit variety and the gameplay variety they provide. I apologize if that wasn't clear enough. Rollers provide a different type of gameplay that gameplay against humanoid Grineer doesn't not contribute to; smaller, more agile enemies that, while more difficult to hit, die quickly when actually hit. They have smaller hitboxes and less discernible weaknesses than humanoid Grineer, meaning the same strategies that work against other Grineer types won't be as effective against Rollers. This provides extra layers to combat situations which challenge players. These types of units have been used in games for ages, to great effect. They don't just suddenly stop being good in the confines of this game."

 

You do realize that all those terrible unit ideas I suggested above also provide gameplay variety, right?

 

Also, generally speaking, the least liked enemies in games are the small fast annoying ones that are troublesome to hit. Case in point: The mosquitos from Dark Souls. Nobody I know has a good thing to say about them, because they're small, fast, and difficult to hit and thus annoying as all get out.

 

Which makes sense, considering that annoying small fast enemies started out in the day of the arcade game, where they wanted to keep you annoyed enough to keep putting in quarters.

 

"The Roller's ability to stagger continuously and deliver these staggers effortlessly, however, are not worth keeping. Instead of removing them completely, which is unwarranted, we can change them to provide more challenge to players coupled with the 'agile low-HP enemy' angle so that players are given more opportunities to challenge their repertoire of skills beyond the gameplay variety that Grineer units do."

Why is "agile low-HP enemy" something deserving to be kept to begin with? Why is that more valid than, say, "teamplay enhancing enemy that forces players to work together?" (I'm referring of course to the nervo.)

 

"Annoyance isn't inherently bad. With their fake difficulty gone, there's more room to add better types of difficulty."

 

I'm sorry, what? I thought you just said that annoying enemies are not inherently bad. But I can't have heard that right. Because it's crazy. Annoyance is the very opposite of fun. If an enemy is annoying, it doesn't belong in a game. Even Dark Souls, the posterchild for amazing difficulty, has very few outright annoying enemies. 

 

"Why would it be worse? Be specific."

 

Because it violates the game's internal logic (previously the only unit with conditional invulnerability like that is a boss; the other unit with a similar windup is definitely not invulnerable during this point), is excessively game-mechanicy in a blatant fashion, and actively punishes players for keeping attention to their surroundings (so if they notice the chargeup they can't shoot the roller to take advantage of their good situational awareness? Wat).

 

 

"Speculation at best, and your personal viewpoint. You state you don't find current Rollers particularly worrisome, and these changes make them slightly less frustrating. These changes and pretty much any change that doesn't directly add straight-up challenge to other units in the game won't interest you if that's the case, but they might interest others and make the unit more fun and engaging for others. You don't speak for them, because several have already expressed these desires in this thread already."

 

It doesn't take much thought and experience in the game to ponder and see where I'm coming from here, Moonicus.

[LongDraw]

Again, STATISTICS 101. READ MY OP POST FOR ONCE. I already explained why a 1000 sample size is more than enough to make an accurate prediction of the entire population. Have YOU ever done polls before?

I can say that I have performed many polls in several MMOs and unless you're looking at a total population of about 5000 or less, a sample size of 1000 is insufficient.  I suspect based on live stream viewer counts that the entire WarFrame population numbers somewhere around 30,000-50,000 worldwide.  Which means that your 1,000 votes on the poll (of which I know for a fact I was able to vote twice in the same poll btw) would only represent between 0.033% - 0.020% of the total population.  Not very convincing with those kind of numbers.  So again, I am going to ask you to show us "where you made mention of an in-game poll which you or another player either suggested or the developers have begun/finished work on implementing."

 

Oh, and while I admire Cpl_Facehugger's and MoonicusMaximus's detailed point-on-point debate that specifically quotes each other's sections, the multi-quote non-sense is getting out of hand.  If the readers here want to refer back to a prior post, they can do so by scrolling on the page or going to a previous page with the page buttons at the top and bottom of the thread.

 

If I continue to see the multi-quoting continue alongside the pointless sarcasm, I'm going to report the thread and request this thread be closed.

[MJ12]

I can say that I have performed many polls in several MMOs and unless you're looking at a total population of about 5000 or less, a sample size of 1000 is insufficient.  I suspect based on live stream viewer counts that the entire WarFrame population numbers somewhere around 30,000-50,000 worldwide.  Which means that your 1,000 votes on the poll (of which I know for a fact I was able to vote twice in the same poll btw) would only represent between 0.033% - 0.020% of the total population.  Not very convincing with those kind of numbers.  So again, I am going to ask you to show us "where you made mention of an in-game poll which you or another player either suggested or the developers have begun/finished work on implementing."

 

I keep seeing this utter misunderstanding of statistics and it keeps being wrong.

A sample size of 1000 is more than sufficient to predict accurately the outcome of Presidential elections, with a voting population of many tens of millions. This is because the sample size needed to get an accurate prediction of a population is completely independent of the population size as long as the population is significantly greater than 500-1000.

Most professional polling agencies specifically use a sample size of ~500-1000 because it's accurate enough and costs less money.

Stop trying to apply common sense to statistics, all it does is give you wrong answers.

[LongDraw]

I keep seeing this utter misunderstanding of statistics and it keeps being wrong.

A sample size of 1000 is more than sufficient to predict accurately the outcome of Presidential elections, with a voting population of many tens of millions. This is because the sample size needed to get an accurate prediction of a population is completely independent of the population size as long as the population is significantly greater than 500-1000.

Most professional polling agencies specifically use a sample size of ~500-1000 because it's accurate enough and costs less money.

Stop trying to apply common sense to statistics, all it does is give you wrong answers.

And which professional polling agency did you say you work for?  I work as a Corporate IT Operations Coordinator for a multi-billion dollar company that operates around the world.  What's your job?

[fishworshipper]

Don't throw jobs into this.

Just don't.

[MoonicusMaximus]

I was writing up a quote-for-quote reply for you, Hugs, but during which I caught sight of LongDraw's post and, yeah, it's really not worth it for either of us. Nothing but circular arguments and people not bothering to read our posts.

 

Fact of the matter is, some people want Rollers tweaked and made more fun, some people want them removed. Some of us are stating what we'd like to see through suggestions. I like the idea of Rollers, and I want to keep them around, and in the process maybe make them more fun for myself and others. That's why I voted Yes on the poll, and that's my position.

[SwordAxeMace]

My opinion: (since you can't dismiss that)

 

1) That poll is big enough, gratz on getting 1k+

2) Rollers are seriously annoying, I don't want them removed although I feel I should just be able to jump over them.

3) The butthurt is tangible in this thread

[Mercathin]

Seems a little Argumentum ad populum to me.

 

Poll that uses self-selection? Useful for amusement, but not anything serious.

 

Also, showing the results prior to voting causes the effect known as 'band wagoning'.

 

You know what.

I am just going to leave this link here.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/readpoll.html

 

Who knows, maybe someone will learn something.

[MJ12]

And which professional polling agency did you say you work for?  I work as a Corporate IT Operations Coordinator for a multi-billion dollar company that operates around the world.  What's your job?

 

And remind me where 'statistician' is in 'Corporate IT Operations Coordinator'? Because this is a pretty huge mistake. I'd find research papers to disprove your idea that "1000 people is not enough for a MMO" except for the small problem that this is such a basic tenet of statistics that I literally cannot find any research. It's like trying to find a sourced research paper on "1+1=2".

 

http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm

 

Have a survey research calculator. Note that at the 99% CL with a CI of 5 (+/-5%) and a population of "very large" (i.e. infinite) you only need 666 people. To get a CI of 4 (+/-4%) you only need 1040 people.

 

http://www.gallup.com/poll/101872/how-does-gallup-polling-work.aspx

 

Gallup uses 1000 respondents for its polls.

 

At the current # of respondents (1143) and the current ratio (86% for changes, 14% against), you can be 99% certain of the poll being correct up to a +/-3.8% margin of error. That means, simply enough, the poll is reliable enough, as it means there's a 99% probability that anywhere from 82.2 to 89.8% of the Warframe population wants Rollers changed or removed. I have no earthly idea why your company doesn't think this is sufficient, unless the only things it polls are so controversial that 1% margins of error are too high, or the populations of the MMOs you poll are so small that you still are polling nearly a  thousand people and think this scales up indefinitely. It doesn't.

 

Play with that sample size calculator a bit more. Enter in '5000' for the population and 5 for the CI. Notice you need 588 people. Then leave population blank (this means the calculator assumes your population is extremely large). You need 666 people to get the same CI. Less than a 13% change. Your numbers are extremely overblown.

 

Use the second calculator as well to confirm. Warframe seems to actually have about a million active players, so we'll use that number and his stats (86%, 1143). 2.65% CI is the result. Basically the numbers are more than sufficient.

 

 

Seems a little Argumentum ad populum to me.

 

Poll that uses self-selection? Useful for amusement, but not anything serious.

 

Also, showing the results prior to voting causes the effect known as 'band wagoning'.

 

You know what.

I am just going to leave this link here.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/readpoll.html

 

Who knows, maybe someone will learn something.

 

You'd be right if the numbers were close. A lot of the bias in this situation can be discounted as bias that actually benefits the losing side. You're right that it's not as useful as a random scientific poll but unless you have actual evidence that it's rigged instead of Rollers just being that bad, a lot of this is basically just stirring up FUD. "Band wagoning" is a problem except it clearly isn't in things like polls for the Presidential election, wherein fivethirtyeight was basically dead on.

[SaintLucifer]

A pool made on a non official site isn't exactly what i would call a valid thing....

[Scowlface2]

Rollers having unfair mechanics, like stagger on touch and capability of stunlock, constitute and support fixes and changes to them to make them a more fair, enjoyable enemy. It does not constitute or justify their removal from the game. Rollers can be more than they currently are, but removal of enemy types isn't what DE should be looking at, certainly not for the reasons that have been stated when it is entirely possible to change them and keep their small and fast enemy type, rather than continue to add more large and slow enemy types.

 

Uh huh. Thereby, Nervos should be brought back, given spawn increase buffs, and show up in single player mode too hmmm?

 

After all, they do everything rollers can do, and then some.

Edited May 15, 2013 by Scowlface2

[Worira]

A pool made on a non official site isn't exactly what i would call a valid thing....

 

Holy crap just stop. This is the rhetorical equivalent of watching men armed with pool noodles run single file towards a machine gun nest.

[SaintLucifer]

Holy crap just stop. This is the rhetorical equivalent of watching men armed with pool noodles run single file towards a machine gun nest.

Was that supposed to make any sense?

[Spriggs]

I agree, the Rollers need a change, not be removed.

Edited May 15, 2013 by Spriggs

[MJ12]

Uh huh. Thereby, Nervos should be brought back, given spawn increase buffs, and show up in single player mode too hmmm?

 

After all, they do everything rollers can do, and then some.

 

No no no, not difficult enough.

 

They should also cloak.

 

While cloaked, like Loki, they should be invulnerable to melee attacks and gunfire.

[MoonicusMaximus]

Uh huh. Thereby, Nervos should be brought back, given spawn increase buffs, and show up in single player mode too hmmm?

 

After all, they do everything rollers can do, and then some.

 

That's a great idea.

 

They should be able to split up into 3 Nervos after being killed as well.

 

But not again after killing those baby-Nervos. That would be silly.

 

No no no, not difficult enough.

 

They should also cloak.

 

While cloaked, like Loki, they should be invulnerable to melee attacks and gunfire.

 

But this is a stupid idea. Nervos can't cloak, they are too small for cloaking mirrors.

Edited May 15, 2013 by MoonicusMaximus

[PaperAlien]

No no no, not difficult enough.

 

They should also cloak.

 

While cloaked, like Loki, they should be invulnerable to melee attacks and gunfire.

No, that's just fake difficulty because you can't stop them! They should give them a 0.2 second uncloak before they attack so that it's still completely fair and avoidable unless you're those 5-year-olds who can't aim, in which case you deserve to lose control of your character, how dare you play this game without insane reflexes and aiming skills? Go back to CoD!

[MoonicusMaximus]

No, that's just fake difficulty because you can't stop them! They should give them a 0.2 second uncloak before they attack so that it's still completely fair and avoidable unless you're those 5-year-olds who can't aim, in which case you deserve to lose control of your character, how dare you play this game without insane reflexes and aiming skills? Go back to CoD!

 

That's a strawman, you're not supposed to be bad at videogames. And if you are, you should have your hand held because you aren't allowed to be bad at them; it's illogical.

[MJ12]

That's a strawman, you're not supposed to be bad at videogames. And if you are, you should have your hand held because you aren't allowed to be bad at them; it's illogical.

 

Video games are entertainment, not a job. The way you and others who defend Rollers treat them, you'd think that playing videogames is like joining the SAS or becoming a professional engineer or something, where lives are in your hands and if you don't play well enough people die and nations fall.

 

When I have to take the VGAT (Video Game Aptitude Test) to play videogames, which is a highly sought out job that pays me six figures and requires years of training in Video Game School, then and only then can you claim "you're not supposed to be bad at videogames" with a straight face. Stop taking your entertainment so seriously.

Edited May 15, 2013 by MJ12

[MoonicusMaximus]

Video games are entertainment, not a job. The way you and others who defend Rollers treat them, you'd think that playing videogames is like joining the SAS or becoming a professional engineer or something, where lives are in your hands and if you don't play well enough people die and nations fall.

 

When I have to take the VGAT (Video Game Aptitude Test) to play videogames, which is a highly sought out job that pays me six figures and requires years of training in Video Game School, then and only then can you claim "you're not supposed to be bad at videogames" with a straight face.

 

They have VGATs? Because I must be awesome at them, seeing as I can shoot Rollers about 70% of the time. That 30%, though, that's a real kicker right there.

Edited May 15, 2013 by MoonicusMaximus

[xenapan]

you take a 1000 person poll from the wiki. when there were 6000+ people who showed up for the livestream alone. so those votes represent a mere 1/6th of a population of people who showed up for the livestream alone.

 

Vocal majority != majority.

[Worira]

you take a 1000 person poll from the wiki. when there were 6000+ people who showed up for the livestream alone. so those votes represent a mere 1/6th of a population of people who showed up for the livestream alone.

 

Vocal majority != majority.

 

You know, I'd think you'd read the original post and then immediately responded without reading any of the posts after it, but that still wouldn't explain it. Maybe you only looked at the picture?

 

EDIT: Also, I'm fairly certain a vocal majority does equal a majority.

Edited May 15, 2013 by Worira

[Vidia]

If you want challenge, feel free to not use potatoes

also, only kill rollers by meleeing them. 

Edited May 15, 2013 by Vidia

[P-W-N]

I say tweak the way they stagger players. Getting surrounded and stunlocked for god knows how long by 5+ balls is just annoying.