Snack Tier Poll

Hey everyone!

I'm trying something new with the polls this time.

I've been wanting to branch out from Patreon for a little while now, and recently I have added subscriptions to DeviantArt. Of course, this introduces the problem of having to post polls on multiple platforms, some of which (DA included) don't even have a polling feature tied to subscriptions.

After weighing up the options, we have found that RT Pollmaster seems to the best. This is a Discord bot which not only allows us to offer a single consolidated poll to both Patreon and DeviantArt users, but also offers several polling features that I would like to use that are not available on Patreon:
                         

Weighted Votes

This is the main feature that I have wanted from polls for a long time, as it would allow me to restructure the monetisation of the whole project. Instead of having polls exclusive to tiers, every subscriber would get to vote on every tier, but the votes would be weighted accordingly.

This would allow me to confer benefits to a wider variety of supporters. My plan is to add two new tiers: a Drink Tier and a Feast Tier. The weighting for the votes in every poll would then be something like:

• Drink Tier: 1 Vote

• Snack Tier: 5 Votes

• Meal Tier: 10 Votes

• Feast Tier: 15 Votes

This way, if you want to support the project but cannot afford $5 a month, you could hop onto drink tier for $1 and still have a say in what is coming next. On the contrary, if you're really invested, want to support the project even more and have a greater influence on the next update, you can get onto the feast tier.

In addition to giving subscribers more options and influence over the project, I am also hoping that this will drive up support for the project, which I will soon be looking to invest in commissioning some more people to work for the project - look out for this if you're offering commissions and think you might have skills which could help!

Hidden Vote Tracking

Live vote tracking can be hidden, which means that tactical voting will be less prevalent. I would prefer "whichever character has a greater chance of winning right now" to have less influence over the final results, and to encourage everyone to vote for their number one options as much as possible. The results will still be published for everyone to see once the poll ends.

Custom Answers

We can set an answer to be typed instead of pre-set. In the past, I have used an "other" option and had the voters type their answers in the comments, so this just simplifies that a little.

Voting Visibility

We can make it so that users can see who has voted for what, or we can have them anonymous. I'd like the have the voting results visible because it might help drive discussion about the characters, which is always welcome in the server.

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Of course, this does mean that you won't be able to just put your vote in on Patreon - you'll need to make a Discord account which is linked to your subscriber account and join the server (there may be a short waiting period for you to read the server rules):

Discord Server Invitation

I will always post a direct link to the poll on here though, so you won't have to worry about missing it. Here is the Snack Tier poll for this month:

Snack Tier Poll

I am aware that this adds a layer of faff and some of you may not like it, so consider this a trial run. I've also had some people complain about bugs with Patreon polls, which I have also witnessed myself at times, so maybe this will be a welcome change to those people.

Even if you don't like the idea of using Discord to vote, I hope that you'll at least see the potential benefits it will have for the project and support the idea anyway.

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TL;DR

We're trialling a new voting system using Discord which will allow us to consolidate votes from subscribers on different platforms (Patreon, DA, etc.) and (hopefully) improve the monetisation system for both supporters and the project itself. See links above to access this month's poll.