P.O.P. Improvement suggestions thread

[Adam Schmelzle]

Got any suggestions? Post em all in this thread!

[Adam Schmelzle]

I've added more info the menu screen, as well as fixed the rankings. Word.

[Adam Schmelzle]

Just made a pile of changes. Nobody has any thoughts?

[brianthemike]

I like the new changes, and I like that it costs more seeds now to make a poll...as well as the potential return on seeds vs. wagers. I do have a couple ideas for P.O.P (which I seem to be on all the time now hehe)

1. Maybe add a Vote and Add to Favorites button on polls to quickly check back on polls you'd like to see the answers on

2. Might add a "Most Popular Polls" link based on how many people favorite a poll if the above is implemented.

3. Possible reward system for polls most favorited.

4. Adding a "Your Poll Results" link for the creator of polls to check back on when finished.

I had quite a few more ideas but I forgot to write them down...I'll put em up when I think of them again :-)

::In game - B-ri::

[Adam Schmelzle]

Thanks for the feedback!

[brianthemike]

Oh yeah going back to the Favorited idea...Possible setup for link design

Favorite Polls
→My Favorites

Most Popular Polls
→All Time
→This Week
→This Month

And Maybe you could condense the ranking system like the above design. So not too cluttered on main page...

My Rankings
→Ranking Overall
→Ranking Accuracy
→Ranking Winnings
→Ranking Active Wagers
→Ranking Submitter


::In game - B-ri::

[Adam Schmelzle]

Yeah I was debating grouping all the ranks together, but on the G1 it's hard to be accurate when you're clicking URL's.

The main menu certainly could do with a make-over all 'round.

[Adam Schmelzle]

It'll be interesting to see if the new system keeps the quality of polls higher, and hopefully less frequent than it was over the weekend. Most users are from the US, so I expect traffic to pick up now that it's after 5:00pm EST.

[brianthemike]

I hear ya. I do think the quality will be higher...my main concern is too few polls being submitted with the change, so I'm looking forward to the results of that with the workday/schoolday over. My only suggestion for the grouping of links is more white space, the front page seems easy to click for me. Maybe add an actual mouse pointer w/ the trackball...don't know if that's even possible w/ the type of app it is.

::In game - B-ri::

[brianthemike]

There's a decent mouse pointer on the Chess for Android game. Maybe ya could "borrow" the code if you can find the source for it hehe. Maybe just change the dot it is to an image of your own creation.

::In game - B-ri::

[brianthemike]

If alot of polls are being submitted, maybe there could be an option to place your poll in a certain category. And users could choose categories of polls to take. Like..society, technology, movies, videogames, etc. Not sure how that would go over, but I was a little overwhelmed when there was 200 something polls to take when I first DL'd the app.

And this one would probably be difficult to implement, but an easy to read pie graph on poll results would be nifty.

[Adam Schmelzle]

Yeah, I'd like to do a more graphical representation for the results. I may do a simple bar graph, since that wouldn't be hard on the server. I could do fancy graphics for the results if I did 'em in game instead of on a web-page from the server, but one of my goals with this app was to update as needed without requiring users to update from the market.

Strangely enough, it seems to be a bad thing making the app not require re-downloading. The silly marketplace puts your app back to the top of the list if you update it, so frequently updating would get more downloads.

Also, the adMob and Millennial Media banner ads are next to useless. With the flower games the 'offers' were able to cover server costs, but nobody seems to care about extra seeds yet since P.O.P. came out. When P.O.P. was first uploaded, it was waaaaaay too easy to earn extra seeds from reviews/submitting, which unfortunately killed off my only revenue stream 'cause most of the users came from the flower games and got a quick injection of seeds.

I'm fighting the urge to port over to iPhone 'cause I've at least got a decent advertising partner for iPhone games.

[brianthemike]

Well from a business standpoint you're only hurting yourself by not porting it to the iphone as far as profits go. With POP out maybe flower game stuff should cost more seeds. Or make seeds more of a necessity to grow e.g. to water, or something else maybe w/ the increase in item prices, offers could get you items and/or seeds or maybe even "special" buffs not yet thought of. I know these types of flowers don't have thorns, but that would be good for a special buff if combat is enabled.

Also right now there's no reason to have combat since you grow faster w/out it. >aybe a revamp is in order for the combat system...maybe like a minigame app to make it more of an action type minigame. Or have players get randomly attacked by bugs and spend seeds on bug repellant or something.

[Adam Schmelzle]

You do get 3x the seeds when combat is enabled, but I agree that it needs a lot of work before it's all that useful. The biggest problem is that I get next to no feedback on anything.

[Adam Schmelzle]

The reason I don't want to port over to iPhone/iPod is that developing for those systems makes me angry. I hate it. Porting to iPhone is like a 'real job', which I was glad to get a break from when I moved over to making android stuff last month. Every step in the process of making iPhone/iPod software is damaging to my soul, and I would like to not have to worry about it anymore.

There's just something so heartbreaking about working on a piece of software for months, only to have apple 'delay' it for months and then reject. Not an issue with android

[cajred]

My biggest complaint at the moment is really nothing you (Adam) can control. There are a lot of duplicate polls (when did you lose your virginity and favorite kind of alcohol come to mind). Meanwhile, I've had several original ideas for polls get rejected, most likely because people had to think a little bit!

The polls I'm proudest to admit were mine were:
- Favorite actor to play James Bond
- Best actor (choose from Deniro, Pacino, D. Washington, Tom Hanks)
- Best U.S. President

The ranking system still doesn't make a lot of sense to me. My overall ranking is great (15) and my submitter rank (2), but I'm dead last in winnings and accuracy. I have a hard time believing that I'm dead last in those categories since I usually win the bets I place.

All in all, this is a really cool app that has the "staying power" in my opinion.

[Adam Schmelzle]

The categories that you are dead last in will simply be because of the number of wagers you've made. On the score screen it should actually say 'Need 30 wagers' in place of your score in the 'Winnings', and 'Accuracy' categories.

Maybe this needs more explanation somewhere? Anyhoo, the reason I'm doing this is to prevent players from doing 1 wager on something stupid like 'do you wnat 1 million dollars', and having 100% accuracy for an easy #1 ranking. I feel that after 30 wagers, you've pretty much proven your worth and deserve to be ranked. I realize that it will take a while, but if you wager on every poll it shouldn't take more than a couple days.

Maybe it's broken, and I don't know about the bug? How many wagers are listed in your activity ranking, or user stats?

...never mind. Isee that you've got 20 wagers under your belt in the 'active wagers' ranking. You'll get there soon!

[Adam Schmelzle]

I wish people wouldn't complain about the 'long review times'. Before the changes, we had 200+ active polls that people didn't want to answer, and nobody would wager on polls that end every 5 minutes. Also, when I reduced the amount of seeds you guys make per review you complained about that, but if I shorten the length of the reviews it's the same effect.

Here's my dilemma, and maybe you guys have some suggestions to help?

1) Longer reviews give more people the chance to make a seed(good)
2) Longer reviews give more people a chance to reject a poll(good/bad), and longer to get new polls active(bad)
3) Too many polls are repeats(bad). So I can't really make it harder to reject a poll.
4) If it's easier to reject a poll: gets rid of the duplicate polls(good), but people reject almost everything(bad)
5) I can't moderate the polls. I'm just one person and have to spend my time doing other stuff, which is why this is supposed to be player-reviewed. Also when I approve/reject a poll it takes away the chance for other people to make a seed during the review process.

I suspect these problems would be easier to deal with if we had more players. If we had more people, reviews would be more reliable and would be wagered on more. With more wagers, the shorted time between polls wouldn't be a problem either. Unfortunately I have no easy way to increase the number of players. I've tried banner ads through AdMob, but for some reason after clicking on my ads, NOBODY actually downloads the game. I've sent money into the internet ether trying to advertise this game with zero success.

I want to help, but I think we simply need more people.

[lachicabonita]

I actually think the improvements made so far are great.

I personally think that there should be categories of some sort where you the asker or poll creator can assign your question to that section/folder.

For example I live in the US so the majority of my question will be relevant to the US so if I ask a question regarding living in the US user's from the UK shouldn't have to be bombarded by those questions. Also user's. Shouldn't have all legit questions denied because it pertains to what they know.

Further more all though you can skip it would be nice to select the movies category and if you prefer to answer movie polls. If someone feels comfortable answering adult question well there's a category for that also.

The new review process is rather long, but a minor inconvenience. The increase in amount for polls is a good way to stop people from asking those non-sense string of questions.

P.S. Love all the games you create from Origami Daisy-P.O.P, can't wait to see what you have in store next. Thank You for your time spent on creating these games and actually listening to the users comments, concerns and suggestions.

[Adam Schmelzle]

Thanks for your feedback. I think if we had more users I'd definitely put in an option for categories, as well as region-specific polls. The reason I'm not doing it, is that there isn't a large enough user base. If I don't force everyone through every poll, they simply won't be answered and/or wagered on.

My next plan of attack is a facebook app. The facebook version would use the same server side as the android one, so if it's popular we would likely have a huge influx of new players from all over the world. At that point the sheer volume of people will make a lot of the features work better, and justify the inclusion of new options.

[cajred]

Adam, anything you can do about the duplicate polls that seem to make it past the review process somehow? Maybe it's jusat because there are lots of users and hence they haven't seen the dup polls so they approve them?

Again I think this game is great and it's truly the only one of its kind on the market. I downloaded about a week ago and I'm still checking many times a day for new polls to review or take, so that makes this app better than 99% of the games I download on the Android market.

[Adam Schmelzle]

I suppose we could say that if a poll gets past review, then there must be enough people that have not seen it before. This means the results may be different, but you and I would have an edge up on the results. I may put in a list of recently closed poll questions, like I do with the list of other polls that are in review. That would help a little I think.

Glad you like the app, it's too bad not many people actually download it. I'm in the process of making a facebook app interface for the game, so hopefully that will bring in a pile of new people to make things more interesting.

[aurora]

I too think it would be great to have a section for reviewing your own polls. Recently I created a poll that I would have like to see the results on but was too late to even see it on recent polls & I check in often.

[Adam Schmelzle]

Yeah, sometimes there are a ton of polls ending at the same time in the evening. I'm putting in new features and will have a way to browse back through the polls, and likely a list of your own poll results as well.

Also, because nobody seems to care to get seeds using offers in this game(which should pay for itself), I'm changing things up a bit. I'm putting in 'upgrades' so that you can spend your seeds to increase income, reduce poll submission cost, increase poll submitter cut, etc.

[Adam Schmelzle]

New features are now live. You likely won't see your old polls in your 'my results' section 'cause I wasn't saving the submitter with the results before. New polls will be listed though. Also, the upgrades are now in place, so please fill out the new 'Do you like the new upgrade system?' poll for me folks.

Thanks,
Adam.

[alii937]

Change the look of it cuz it looks boring ...srry. n it takes way 2 long 4 polls 2 get reviewed. Sometimes wen I go on there's nothing 2 do. For hours cuz I already did everything