If you'd studied statistics you'd understand the problem.

The problem is you have a sampling Bias here in that

1) People on HC realms may actually have a greater dedication to the game than non-realmsers, meaning that their responses are not indicative of the community at large. While there is no indication that his is actually true, the likelihood is such that you could not consider any sample from the realms as representative. (this has been one of the criticisms of polling in recent years, as polsters only phone landlines and there are an increasingly large percentage of people who don't have landlines.

2) Even if you could assume realmsers are a representative sample you would have to choose the respondents in a random manner, but the type of people who respond here are in no way random. When conducting a poll polsters don't just call the first 100 people in the phone book, they take a huge sample and then randomly draw out something like 1200-2400 people.

3) assuming the amount of people who play Clix is in the 20,00 plus range a representative sample would include something like at least 500-1000 respondents (technically speaking anything over like 10,000 needs the same sample size ~1000-2000)

4) You are only taking into account the people who respond. In polling, once you have chosen a representative sample you must do everything in your power to get answers from those and only those people. Only choosing answers from the people who respond biases the sample in favor of people who genuinely care about this issue (this is the primary problem with magazine polls)

5) The polsters themselves need to be a source that doesn't bias the respondent. If I call your house and tell you I'm working for Obama and I'd like your opinion on the recent financial meltdown is very serious I'm likely to get a very different answer than if I just asks the people the same question without telling them who I work for.

I think there might be another few problems, but those are the obvious problems off the top of my head. Given those problems there's next to nothing that really can be extracted from yours (or nearly anyone's) polls on this site.

i hate power creep.
It only affects my buying because the only way to successfully compete i need those new and strong clix.
I think because of Powercreep that it dose not let me play all the figs i want because if i do they have a smaller chance of winning.

LOL, I love the tags for this thread

hitler , lemmings , power-creep , whining


Yeah...those are pretty frickin hilarious...

So what you're saying is "People on HCRealms" have a greater dedication...ergo, they care more about the game. I'm okay with polling that particular demographic. (For reasons I'll discuss further down in this responce.)

I'm willing to accept whatever error comes from this, as I'm not willing to put monumental effort into conducting a non-funded poll. So this will have to do, unless you can see a way around this.


Okay so this is wrong...the number of people you need to poll does not need to be anywhere near that large. While I didn't "Study polling" as you correctly pointed out, I did look at the standard diviation formulas and the numbers you gave here are much larger than they need to be. The greater the number of people you pole the smaller the standard deviation, but even with the 30 or so people I've had awnser here that value is pretty small. While the number on the People who like powercreep vs the people who don't like powercreep question is very close, and that diviation could make a difference in the outcome there. The "people who's spending habbits are affected by powercreep" is a total blowout. The Standard diviation couldn't swing the outcome of that to the other side. So I have gotten some useful information:
1> the number of people who like powercreep is close to the number of people who don't.
2> Powercreep has almost no effect on the amount of clix sold.

I didn't get a conclusive answer two question 1 knowing it's non-conclusive is something in and of itself, and question 2 was definitely conclusive.
And reading the Comments people had on Powercreep was interesting as well.

Honestly, I'm totally okay with only getting the opinions of those who "genuinely care about the issue".
Logic dictates that people who don't care about powercreep or haven't noticed powercreep are most likely casual players, who didn't participate in this poll, and are even less likely to have had their spending habbits affected by powercreep. Something that was very noticable in this poll was the even people who like powercreep don't think powercreep itself affects their spending. So those who are indifferent to this issue are even less likely to let it affect their spending on clix.

Okay, you got me on this one. I will give you that my name is somewhat synonimous with "Complainer". And as such there are some people who will avoid this thread on account of that. But at the same time, I've noticed a large group of nay-sayers who seem to go out of their way to pop into my threads and attack my ideas irregardless of what they are. But, surprisingly, even most of those people said that their purchasing choices weren't affected by Powercreep. So even people who disagree with me on principal most of the time, had the same answer as most everyone else on question 2.

I got an unexpected result from this poll for question 1. (This was informative to me.)

Question 2 was enough of a blowout and for reasons previously stated, that It's fair to say "Powercreep has very little affect on the amount of clix sold".

I'm happy with this thread...I learned something I didn't know. And Question 2 was pretty conclusive.

The result is: I don't know for a fact that there is powercreep or not (It appears that most people think there is). Some people like it, some don't like it. Some people think that powercreep makes new sets more interesting. Some think it devalues the figures they purchased previously.

But there is one opinion that appears to be wrong: And that is: "Powercreep is a necessary evil". That is if the people saying it think it is "Necessary for wizkids to sell product". Because this poll pretty clearly shows that Powercreep has almost no effect on customer purchases of clix. Hence from a sales of clix perspective it doesn't affect sales numbers at all.

I don't know if powercreep exists, or if Wizkids does it intentionally, but whether they do or not the view that it is necessary to increase sales appears to be a myth. I'm confident the results of this inaccurate poll at least show that.


Now for the real longshot conclusion-
EVEN IF Wizkids actually intentionally were injecting power creep into the game.
AN EVEN IF They saw this thread and believed the results and quit doing that.

Nothing would be effected sales wise. The people on HCRealms might be happier, and that change would have basically no effect on casual players who aren't on HCRealms and are even less likely to even know the thing that stopped even existed in the first place.

So...no harm in killing powercreep....(If it even exists) It's not a NECESSARY EVIL....that is a myth.

What about you Dax? Does Powercreep affect the amount of Clix you purchase?

Do you like Powercreep?


And besides Dax, they do have some value. If I make a statement like:

"Powercreep has almost no affect on HeroClix Sales"

And someone chooses to argue with me on this point....as inaccurate as you think they are....I do at least have the data from my "Inaccurate poll" to support my statement....whereas the person argueing against me doesn't even have that....in fact what they are saying flies in the face or the data from my inaccurate poll. And no one has mentioned a logical reason why "Dedicated HCRealms Heroclix players opinions" are less valueable than the most likely "less dedicated non-HCRealmers heroclix player" populous. I'll give you that "Issues like powercreep" are more likely to be taken seriously on HCRealms.....which mean that the results of this poll showing "Powercreep has nearly no effect on Heroclix sales" is even less likely to "Swing the other way" if you add a huge demographic to the poll which takes Heroclix issues less seriously than HCRealms participants do.

Ergo - My poll conclusion, at least for question 2 of this poll, is probably quite accurate. You have a logical reason why they're not?

And Dax - Self examination time:....I couldn't help but notice that there seems to be a weekly HCRealms Poll on the main page of this site.....do you spam that poll as well to cry wolf there too and tell them their poll is inaccurate and pointless? Or is it just my threads?

Why is that?

Oops, we can add:

ad hominem and brazilphobia to the already existing hilter, lemmings, power-creep and whining tags.

LOL!!! Insane homeless man! This just keeps getting better! I swear I'm going to split my sides I'm laughing so hard!

Well congratulations: By amazing "Coincidence" your answer matches that of what 90% of the people who answered that same question said. Why I'm shocked.

He's referring to the 'tags' below the thread....homeless man, ad hominem adn brazilphobia are all there...lol!

So if I removed "Your answer" from my results tally...would that make my poll results "More accurate" or "less accurate"? and why?

Quiet, Poophead, we're busy proving points by taking low blows and cheap shots. I kid, I kid.

Seriously though, where is all of the negativity coming from in this thread? I don't agree with Brazil, but why can't he run his poll to get some idea of people's opinions on the matter? Sure, the data may not stand up to scientific analysis, but who cares? It provides more discussion material, if nothing else.

I'm fine with the power creep. In fact, I'm not so sure it exists (in the sense of the creep being strictly upward). Sometimes you just get more bang for your buck. Look at Veteran Mockingbird and then look at the Atlantean Warrior and tell me that the Atlantean Warrior is more powerful. Sure there are counter examples, but that's my point... I don't think that we're creeping much of anywhere.