Dissecting and analyzing Harvest Manifesto + Data collection. A clash of philosophies.

All that the data does is provide a false perception of what the public opinion is.

It's been repeated ad nauseam that people express more negative thoughts than positive, meaning that the 78% negative does not mean that the population of any environment or demographics actually holds beliefs of such.

Also the OP has a strong bias which influences in which light do they want to read the posts and what they personally want the outcome to be.

I say it's a bad post and thread not because of it's effort but because it tries to portray itself as if it were scientifically accurate or provide data meaningful enough to form opinions from.
The poster's personal opinion is all which should be extracted from this.

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Kiss_Me_Quick wrote:

All that the data does is provide a false perception of what the public opinion is.

It's been repeated ad nauseam that people express more negative thoughts than positive, meaning that the 78% negative does not mean that the population of any environment or demographics actually holds beliefs of such.

Also the OP has a strong bias which influences in which light do they want to read the posts and what they personally want the outcome to be.

I say it's a bad post and thread not because of it's effort but because it tries to portray itself as if it were scientifically accurate or provide data meaningful enough to form opinions from.
The poster's personal opinion is all which should be extracted from this.

I am aware, and tried to convey this early on in my post, that there is a high probability for the number of people in favour of the 3.14 post being higher than the current statistic would present. In my post on its creation I estimated this to be 10%, but I have no basis on this. It could well be between 10%-50% for all I know, given the fact, and I've also stated this, that people have been harassed and insulting for voicing their opinion that went against the loud masses.

For the rest I am sorry that I gave you this impression, as my intentional goal really was to collect opinions, collect ideas, and collect a more comprehensible and understandable read regarding the Manifesto, as it was, in my opinion, poorly written / poorly translated considering their intention.

To give you a quick example: "We don't want to take away the feeling of closing your eyes and exalting your item, wondering if you bricked it or not" - Really should have been worded in a way that expresses GGG's desire to have risk being a factor on top of trial and error, when it comes to aquiring powerful items.

Nevertheless, I appreciate your feedback!

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JimmyWoodman wrote:

I have the impression that GGG is ignoring a sad truth.
POE he is old, his philosophy is now boring in its short-term repetition (3 months).
For someone like me who has been playing this game for more than 6 years, it means having repeated the same operation (the optimized dressing of the character) at least 24 times, and with increasingly worse or unnecessarily complicated layers of rng.
Harvest has given a breath of simplification to all that mess of content for crafting (horrible betrayal with all its randomness of unlocking!), Putting the player to enjoy something that is always unattainable.

I don't know what GGG will do, but he will have to be careful in his choices,
because now POE, is a game with so much confusion and little satisfaction.
From the graphic aspects, to the malfunctioning or poorly optimized servers, thinking that only Harvest is a problem is very simplistic.

However, I would like to congratulate Rakushi for the beautiful analysis explained in the opening post.
Thank you

Thank you for the kind words!

While I understand the level of dread you are certainly feeling, aRPGs are notorious for a repetition and for their grind, no pun intended, and in this aspect, I have to say that GGG is doing a great job in the form of keeping players captivated with a constantly evolving endgame.

I for one, think that Harvest will still be a powerful source for crafting powerful gear, but it will, quite simplly, take more effort and thinking to go about it. I personally enjoy this, because PoE never struck me as a "simple" game (Passive skill tree, hefty ammount of support links and choices you can do, the list goes loooong), but I am sad to see the ease of harvest in 3.13 go.

In terms of graphical update, well, Path of Exile 5.0? Path of Exile 2? Whatever you wanna call it, holds a lot of promise in regards of a visual update!

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Rakushi wrote:

I am aware, and tried to convey this early on in my post, that there is a high probability for the number of people in favour of the 3.14 post being higher than the current statistic would present. In my post on its creation I estimated this to be 10%, but I have no basis on this.

For the rest I am sorry that I gave you this impression, as my intentional goal really was to collect opinions, collect ideas, and collect a more comprehensible and understandable read regarding the Manifesto, as it was, in my opinion, poorly written / poorly translated considering their intention.

Even if your goals aren't malevolent, if the data isn't accurate and you have no basis for your percentages, it should not be posted at all. It only makes things worse as the discussion then becomes based on false perception of the scenario.
You think that you align with the majority while in reality that really might not be the case.

Regarding impression - you do title the thread as being "data collection", so I'm not sure what other impression there is to have?
In the end it doesn't matter what impression I got; if you present data and make it as a core of your thesis then people who agree with you on the matter, will take this information factually because it aligns with their views. Doing otherwise produces cognitive dissonance, irrelevant of the truthfulness of the claims.

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Kiss_Me_Quick wrote:

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Rakushi wrote:

I am aware, and tried to convey this early on in my post, that there is a high probability for the number of people in favour of the 3.14 post being higher than the current statistic would present. In my post on its creation I estimated this to be 10%, but I have no basis on this.

For the rest I am sorry that I gave you this impression, as my intentional goal really was to collect opinions, collect ideas, and collect a more comprehensible and understandable read regarding the Manifesto, as it was, in my opinion, poorly written / poorly translated considering their intention.

Even if your goals aren't malevolent, if the data isn't accurate and you have no basis for your percentages, it should not be posted at all. It only makes things worse as the discussion then becomes based on false perception of the scenario.
You think that you align with the majority while in reality that really might not be the case.

Regarding impression - you do title the thread as being "data collection", so I'm not sure what other impression there is to have?
In the end it doesn't matter what impression I got; if you present data and make it as a core of your thesis then people who agree with you on the matter, will take this information factually because it aligns with their views. Doing otherwise produces cognitive dissonance, irrelevant of the truthfulness of the claims.

But the data IS accurate given the premises I've set on it, no? It's clearly stated that what I did is collect data on opinions of people having been posted. EVEN if you take into account that a % of people don't comment positively on the changes, doesn't change the outcome of the data's conclusion: The majority is unhappy with the changes. Is this a false perception? Probable, but unlikely so. Furthermore, this isn't something I've left to be open to discussion, even if it is viewed as such. It's supposed to be informative, an attempt on a better translation than the one written in the Manifesto, to reduce the negative outburst from the community. That is the main essence of the thread, the rest I've put in because I felt they were good ideas + a personal opinion is also feedback.

Regarding impression, the title is read + Data collection. It's a bonus. Not the main point, and you can tell by how little the Data collection plays a role in the post, that it's not meant as a focal point, rather than an illustration of collecting feedback.

I feel like you've missed a point there, by believing the data collected is considered a main point. Just based on the written part you shoud be able to discern that it's not. I am glad that you pointed this out however, because what it means to me is that I should have left the "Data collection" part on the very end, rather than at the top, but overall it doesn't change from the purpose of the thread, it being an attempt to translate between the lines, or true intentions that I believe GGG had within their Manifesto, into a more understandable language.



The reality MIGHT not be the case,

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Rakushi wrote:

doesn't change the outcome of the data's conclusion: The majority is unhappy with the changes. Is this a false perception? Probable, but unlikely so.

You need to be way more careful with your wording.
The bolded part suggests the majority of the playerbase is unhappy - which may or may not be the case. You simply dont know.

The correct wording would have been: The majority of the people commenting in this particular thread is unhappy.

Nothing more and nothing less.


Im not trying to accuse you of misleading people or spreading misinformation.
But you have to be aware that people seeking for confirmation of their own bias will take the bolded part at face value, because they want to, not because its an absolut truth.
If they do take it at face value and do act on this information provided by you, you are more or less responsible for whatever happens next.

This isnt helpful, its likely only going to fuel the fire, if you arent careful with your wording. Nothing to do with your intentions. Its just the way it is and always has been.

Most of the pro-Harvest people use argumentum ad populum constantly and most of the time incorrectly. Having one more around isn't a big deal.

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Orbaal wrote:

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Rakushi wrote:

doesn't change the outcome of the data's conclusion: The majority is unhappy with the changes. Is this a false perception? Probable, but unlikely so.

You need to be way more careful with your wording.
The bolded part suggests the majority of the playerbase is unhappy - which may or may not be the case. You simply dont know.

The correct wording would have been: The majority of the people commenting in this particular thread is unhappy.

Nothing more and nothing less.


Im not trying to accuse you of misleading people or spreading misinformation.
But you have to be aware that people seeking for confirmation of their own bias will take the bolded part at face value, because they want to, not because its an absolut truth.
If they do take it at face value and do act on this information provided by you, you are more or less responsible for whatever happens next.

This isnt helpful, its likely only going to fuel the fire, if you arent careful with your wording. Nothing to do with your intentions. Its just the way it is and always has been.

Point taken, I should. Communication can be quite hard at times ^^;

Id call it a minefield if you arent trained and also aware of all those small and big traps you could walk straight into ^^

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Rakushi wrote:

But the data IS accurate given the premises I've set on it, no? It's clearly stated that what I did is collect data on opinions of people having been posted. EVEN if you take into account that a % of people don't comment positively on the changes, doesn't change the outcome of the data's conclusion: The majority is unhappy with the changes. Is this a false perception? Probable, but unlikely so.

No, "the majority is unhappy" is a false statement.
The majority of the people in that thread who have decided to comment are unhappy from your perspective and interpretation with your bias on the topic, are unhappy.

These two are not equivalents, but plenty of readers will believe that your reading of opinions by a very small number of players is representative of "the majority".

You don't know what is unlikely because you don't have accurate data, you cannot assign any values to them.
You cannot know what you don't know.

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Rakushi wrote:

It's supposed to be informative, an attempt on a better translation than the one written in the Manifesto, to reduce the negative outburst from the community. That is the main essence of the thread, the rest I've put in because I felt they were good ideas + a personal opinion is also feedback.

You reduce the negative outburst by presenting "data" that the majority disagree with the developers which is exaggerated by presenting your own opinion which is also contrary to what the developers believe.
All that applied makes an implication that the developers are in the wrong here and that is supposed to make people calmer?

What a pacifist!

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Rakushi wrote:

Regarding impression, the title is read + Data collection. It's a bonus. Not the main point, and you can tell by how little the Data collection plays a role in the post, that it's not meant as a focal point, rather than an illustration of collecting feedback.

I feel like you've missed a point there

Interviewer: Senator, how would you explain the "Clean drinking water, lower taxes + eat the human babies" bill?
Senator: Oh, the "eat the human babies" part is just a bonus.

It's of absolute irrelevance which signifier you want to give it, people will still take it as a meaningful talking point based on scientific data - which it is not.

I'm talking about how you present and collect the data - that's it.