I'm not sure where to post this, so if there's a better thread please move it. Thanks!
WE HAVE A PROBLEMOne problem I'm finding is the overwhelming number of card ideas that are accumulating in the Lvl 1 Crucible (and will likely occur to a lesser degree at the upper levels as time goes on.) It's great to see the enthusiasm for the game and the creative element of the forum community. The number of card ideas is not the issue
per se but the voting system.
Currently, votes accumulate on cards and I doubt there is little vote changing or review of vote choices as new cards are added. That means that
older card ideas get more votes since there were fewer choices in the beginning and they've had longer time to accumulate votes. A new idea, then, has an uphill battle since it comes in with 0 votes while an older idea may already have 20-30 votes in its favor. Given an infinite amount of time, every halfway decent older cards will all be advanced if only through inertia and the newer cards will all have to wait in line till they've become the oldest cards in the group.
An example:
currently has 30 card ideas (Crucible) and has 3 card ideas with 20 or more votes (2 others have been advanced to Lvl2). They were originally posted May 19, 20 and 26 and the first comments in the
Crucible thread is May 19 which we'll take to be the beginning of the voting process. In contrast, the 3 newest ideas have 1, 1 and 3 votes. Are those newer ideas that much worse than the earlier cards?
It's possible that the oldest ideas are in fact the best ideas and therefore deserve the greatest number of votes. We as a community are thus becoming less and less creative as time goes by. But I think a more likely phenomenon is that we are merely advancing cards that have had the benefit of running for office for a longer period of time.
This is NOT what I think the card idea system was meant to do. I believe we were aiming to advance the best ideas and not the first ideas.
SO HOW DO WE FIX IT?I don't have all the mechanics worked out, but the best solution is to reset the voting polls each month and see which ideas accumulate the most votes each month. It will, of course, mean that members will have to vote more often but they will be more likely to review what's new as opposed to leaving their old votes in place. It will slightly benefit the cards in place at the beginning of the month as opposed to those added just before the vote, but this advantage disappears with the next month (since they will both be in place for the entire month and start with 0 votes.)
Any thoughts?