What you said there is an accurate definition. I wasn't aware I pandered. I didn't change my stance on anything. I was just polling to find out the opionions of this demographic.

Or are you suggesting the people polled were pandering in their answers for some unknown reason. I offered no insentives for anyone to alter their opinion in one way or another.

Yeah, I didn't look. I don't collect, or really even pay much attention to CD sets. I wouldn't know which have character cards and which don't without doing research.

So if those sets aren't listed in chronological order....I'm not sure how the results of that poll indicate that powercreep is present or increasing satisfaction in the sets. Not to mention...this poll just asks which set players "like" the best. Liking a set can come from a huge number of factors....sculpts, paint jobs, power-creep, new set mechanics & powers, characters present in each set, distribution (Some sets were sold in limited quanitites), different other promotions going on with each set. Numbers of Uniques or SRs in each set, the distribution of rarities in each set, number of figures in a set, silly chase figures, dial design...ect. There's just too many factors for the results of such an open ended question to have any meaning in regards to ONE of these factors.

that poll
1) Has a much larger sample size
2) wasn't posted by someone with a bias

And I said "While I'm not convinced this poll is at all accurate it is missing some of the problems you had in yours. "

And the "People like Powercreep" was certainly tongue in cheek, hence the smiley.

Also I gave you fairly specific criticism of why this poll lacks both validity and reliability. As to how to do it on HCRealms, Don't this is a biased sample

Heres How I'd do it
1) Drop the Powercreep term as it is meaningless. Ask specific questions, but limit the questions to 10 or less as most people space out after 10 questions.

2) Gain a list of all the Judges and Venues from either HCRealms or Wizkids. Randomly select about 20 Judges and 20 venues.

3) Petition those Judges and Store owners to hand out your survey to any regular purchaser or player of Heroclix

4) Collect and collate the Data



If you really want to find out if powercreep is not correlated with purchasing habits you need something like the following questions

1) list your 3 favorite DC sets
....
4) Number all DC sets in order of the power of the pieces in that sets (IC, CJ, Unl, Leg, Icons, etc)
....
5) List your 3 favorite Marvel sets
.....
9) Order all Marvel sets in terms of the power of the pieces in that set
10) Do you like Powercreep

so that's half your poll, technically you also want 1-3 blind questions, Red herrings, Questions that aren't for Data collection sort of thing. Ask those and you've got a decent 8 question questionaire that would at least attempt to actually answer your questions.

This paragraph right here proves my point exactly. You (and your pollees) don't KNOW what affects their purchasing habits. Yes, in your instance, we know powercreep probably has 0 influence, as you pre order. HOWEVER.

Me, I like characters. So typically, I buy til I get that character. But sometimes I see other characters afterwards that I like, so I buy more. It might be "wow, I forgot how cool that guy is!" it might be a scuplt, or it might be dial design. or it might be power creep.

since you can't accurately define powercreep, you're asking a loaded question (been saying that since the beginning) and people who don't know they are affected by it will probably say yes, and only those that do (as evidenced by this poll, not very many) will be able to answer 100% truthfully if they say yes. and even then, they might not really.

In fact, the more I think about it, you are/were pandering. You asked people if they like powercreep, and if it affects them, then went ahead and defined powercreep as the continual increasing of power among newer sets (which isn't a hard definition of what is going on here) in order to get the results you want (which, come on don't lie, was "yes powercreep affects my habits" because you wanted to be able to be mad at Wizkids for allowing powercreep to sell more product)

Just because the poll turned out differently than you anticipated doesn't mean you didn't do it.

Needs to follow MLA guidelines, a cover page, images, works cited with proper citations throughout.

Your thesis also sucks.

Oh yeah, and page numbers.

Um, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but this is an A and B conversation.



so go ahead and C your way out buddy


BURN

I defined the term "Powercreep" in my opening post.

Yeah

I can go ahead and say "this is what this word means!" all I want, but it doesn't make it true.


just saying "Powercreep is when each new set gets a little more powerful" is not only a really dumb definition, it's also semi inaccurate, and IMMEDIATELY gives powercreep a negative connotation which IS pandering, as you wanted people to acknowledge that Powercreep is either a.) Bad or b.) influences them to buy more stuff to get the new hotness, making old figures "unbalanced" or "tactically unworth their points"

Also, you've never clearly proven that "powercreep" by your definition is what's actually going on here. You've ignored the possibility for more economical designs, different costs for powers being on different clicks mid dial as opposed to front loaded as they were under Jon L, the point formula (mythical and such) being modified as powers change, special powers being cheaper as only one instance of outwit may be necessary, or more expensive, as you cram multiple powers onto one slot, or just plain more efficient dial design.

so to label the new dials effectiveness as just plain "powercreep" by your definition is a pretty bad idea.


Edit - and you've still not proven that people actually know if "powercreep" has an actual effect on their purchasing habits, or if they just think they know.

Captain Castle - I didn't realize that "Does powercreep affect you purchasing?" was a hard question. For me it was dirt simple. If it was too hard for someone to feel they could give an accurate answer, they were free to say "the didn't know".

As for llyrghmnghyll's reason my poll was inaccurate...all he offered in that post was "Pandering" (Which isn't the case.) It appeared he had the definition wrong....it was his only arguement...so it was the only thing I could correct him on. What else was I supposed to do? Let the Pandering comment stand?

Well now you're just being blatantly ignorant dude. As the guy whos name is a jumble that I don't care to spell out said, there has been hard scientific proof that people DON'T know why they purchase things the way they do. They really don't. This isn't just us being facetious, this is a proven fact, as many many case studies have shown. I don't know what else for us to say on the subject if you're going to sit and tell us that science was wrong for years and years and years, and across hundreds of different studies.


Also - I couldn't help but catch the veiled insult to my intelligence on not being able to answer a simple question. It was subtle, I liked it.

But try a little harder, as once again, you're completely missing our point and making yourself look foolish.

Again, it's less of a problem that you pointed out he had used it wrong (and I think we've shown he hadn't) and more of a problem that you were condescending. Did you really need to reply just to insult his alleged misuse of a word? Is your ego really so fragile that you couldn't let someone dare insinuate your were pandering (and frankly he was right) on the internet?


when I did that, I got warned, and a whole lot of people thought less of me.


Also, you didn't read the poll, or do any research into what the poll was supposed to mean, you just insulted him and ignored his argument and moved on. Sort of like how you keep ignoring the fact that people don't know what affects their purchasing habits.

Or that we can't define powercreep accurately.

People don't answer questions honestly, not because they lie, but because in general most people aren't good at self examination. It isn't taught it wasn't a useful skill in the savanna, or in the tribe, social Psychology repeatedly demonstrates people across the world are bad at it, in short while we are capable of it, we don't do it.

Actually I said you were either Pandering (you know that people are bad judges of their own motivations and you say the opposite because you know people don't like to hear that hey don't know their own motivations - this is pandering) or you were ignorant (of the well documented studies demonstrating that people are bad judges of their own motivations).

I admit you probably aren't pandering, you are ignorant of how people actually function. Most people are, big deal.

One could certainly argue he was pandering in a different way. By asking if people are affected by something he defined as negative, and hoping for people to answer that they are, he was to a degree pandering.

Again, just cause the poll didn't work out that way doesn't mean he wasn't.

It's not the perfect definition, but it's certainly a bias, as we've mentioned several times.


Also, I'd like to point out that we're not arguing this hard just cause it's you Brazil. I'd be arguing this hard with anyone that made this type of thread. It's hard for someone to hold this kind of contempt for a game we enjoy, AND to ignore science and psychology (both passions of mine) in the pursuit to bolster the aforementioned contempt. While I may have started out making this personal, I assure you it no longer is, and this is purely an academic argument.

Larger sample size only produces smaller standard deviation. My sample size is now around 30 which is a pretty small diviation...certainly not enough to sway the results of my question 2 which was overwelmingly "Powercreep doesn't affect purchases."

As for your second point, I can only offer the Popeye responce to that one: "I am what I am."


I defined "powercreep" in my opening post...and "powercreep" was the whole point of the poll. I think I'm well under the 10 question mark....I only asked 2 questions, so I suspect the "space out factor is pretty low".

More work and cost than I care to put out. And is that what they did in the other poll you quoted which you seem to think has merrit?


What relivance does "people's favorite sets" add? "Favorite sets" as I mentioned in my previous responce to you can be a result of many many different factors so how do you get any meaning out of that?


So let me get this straight. Do you honestly think....that if I'd have asked 3 irrelivant question before I asked "Does powercreep affect your purchasing habbits", that people would have given "a different answer"?

That's it? You think people would answer differently? Here let's test that theory:

ATTENTION ANYONE READING THIS: Do you think there's any chance in the world you answered my second question "Wrong" and that by answering three meaningless questions before that question that you would be able to have given a "correct" answer?

(I'm betting we get cricket sounds on this one.)


Captain Castle....did you read his "Suggestions"....are you still championing this guy as a source of "Good polling practice"?

I fully admit I'm biased. But I didn't think I put too much bias in the questions...and besides...how much influence do you honestly think I have? Toss out a number - What percentage of the people who answered these questions do you think answered them "incorrectly" because of my bias....or pandering....or whatever other evil I purpatrated?
Give me a number. Because in my experience here I've found it is amazingly rare for anyone to change anyone's opinion in any of these forum arguements...much less in a single post asking two questions. I assure you if you check my dial, my speed value isn't blue.

Besides - I am biased in my answers to both those questions. The first question people seemed perfectly capable of overcoming "my Bias" as close to half of them answered differently than I did. The second question got overwelmingly identical answers by a HUGE margin. Did inject "time release bias" that only kicked in on the second question?

You realize that most scientific surveys take place with a polling population in the hundreds, and that you have no idea what kinds of affects there can be? Thinking that a sample of 30 (not randomly chosen) is a good population is more than a little naive.


Exactly. People KNOW they are being asked about Powercreep, so they will answer what they think about Powercreep. If they don't KNOW it's about Powercreep, they are more likely to answer honestly (as he said, it's not on purpose, we're just weird animals)

Lol you're coming off as foolish again friend. I realize you don't want to put the work in, but you reap what you sow. You hosted a poll with a personal bias, maybe did a little pandering, and have a laughible sample population and poll layout. Don't expect your data to be worth anything. Also, drop it about the other poll thing buddy. He's not saying it's the word of god, he's just saying it's a more accurate example than yours. He's justifiably right.

That's where the other questions in between those few he mentioned come in handy. To get a better feel for if that particular respondant tends to like sculpts more, character selection, etc

Well no, he actually told you to drop the powercreep term altogether, and find a way to ask it differently. Maybe even break it down to "Do you feel the newer sets characters are more powerful than previous sets, or do you feel the dials are just being designed more efficiently? In either case, how do you feel this effects your purchasing habits?"

Personally, I'd just drop it, because it's not going to get answered honestly. Also, asking some dummy questions does more to encourage this poll being a "blind" study, which is good practice in science.

Now you're kind of acting like a jackass and ignoring some real advice, backed up by years of scientific evidence. Go do some research on scientific studies. It'll blow your mind.

Well I'm not exactly his Tim Drake, but yes. Yes I am. He just gave you some very excellent suggestions on how to validate your poll, all of which are backed up by decades of scientific evidence, and I'm pretty sure he pretty much gave you verbatim the text book definition of a blind survey, as is encouraged by the scientific community worldwide. Whether you choose to take that to heart is your business, but ignoring it merely shows your own ignorance, laziness, and/or stubbornness to admit you might be wrong.

I think you'd truly be surprised how much bias you have, and I'd wager you influenced every single person who responded in one way or another, but we can never tell to what level.

So I guess I'll say 100%. We can never authenticate who and to what degree you influenced, so it's pretty meaningless.

Also, I'm not trying to change your opinion, and neither is he (sorry dude, your name is hard) we're trying to get you to realize that you have a very good possibility of getting some hard evidence on this subject, but you aren't willing to do what it takes.

And I wasn't implying you were mind controlling them, at all. In fact, the fact that you say that really just shows me that you aren't reading what either of us have to say, and we might as well be having this discussion with a wall. At least have the decency to either admit when you're wrong, or do your best to validate your opinion accurately.

If your sample size is large it tends to mediate out some level of the biases that people respond with. Medical studies get away with fewer than 30 people, but that's because they function on different assumptions

[quote]I defined "powercreep" in my opening post...and "powercreep" was the whole point of the poll. I think I'm well under the 10 question mark....I only asked 2.[quote]
1) I guess I missed this as you put your definition after the question
2) This definition doesn't really hold up well to scrutiny


1) Did you miss the part where I said twice the other poll wasn't very reliable, did you miss where I pointed out that it is better then your poll in two ways
2) If you don't do the work you can't draw the results. Drawing conclusions where you haven't done the research is called fraud in science

Yes, because time and time again studies have shown it does. the irrelevant questions are there to reduce the effect of Priming

This is simply inane and obnoxious.

I don't know where to begin trying to explain the social sciences. I recommend starting with the Milgram Experiment, which is a fascinating study of people's ability to follow orders under duress.