713 réponses à ce sujet

[kbct]

daqs wrote...

kbct wrote...

Go read the 1500+ Amazon reviews. People are not as stupid as you make them sound. There are a ton of long well reasoned reviews.

While I'd be the first person to say that the ending didn't do "it" for me, any amount of time on the Internet should have taught you that people can be as long-winded as they want, or devise whatever sophistries they need, or create impassioned, well-crafted posts in favor of something that is wrong or stupid. 

In my opinion, the fans were right. I shouldn't have listened to the professional reviews. They have a conflict of interest. First, they need to cosy up to gaming companies to get interviews and other types of access. Second, they receive ad revenue from gaming companies.

In the future, I want to read a mix of fan reviews before I make a purchase decision.

[Gigamantis]

TheRealJayDee wrote...

Gigamantis wrote...

Even if you don't agree with journalists every time they always present well reasoned and informed reviews.

Journalists aren't supposed to rate games based on fan opinions, they're supposed to tell you whether the game is good or not.

1. No.
2. Yes. Problem is they do not.
 
In case of DA2 my once prefered gaming magazine told me it's great, and gave it a rating of 87/100. Beyond other things part of this rating was a score of 9/10 in the category 'Atmosphere'. Nobody who ever took a short walk through Kirkwall can honestly justify this score, which means the reviewers a) are giving underservedly high scores for whatever reason or simply do not know their ****.

Right, the whole "DA2 is the worst RPG ever" fiasco that preceded this was also a sure sign that users are idiots.  You found a Journalist you didn't agree with, amazing.  DA2 was a good ARPG. 

[Phoenix-Warden]

Stanley Woo wrote...

People got angry when NWN came out and it wasn't BG.
People got angry when KotOR came out because it was a console game.
People got angry when Jade Empire came out because it was a different setting, and it was an action RPG.
People got angry when Mass Effect came out because it was a shooter.
People got angry when Dragon Age: Origins came out because it wasn't BG.
People got angry when DA2 came out because it wasn't DAO.
People got angry when ME2 came out because it wasn't ME1.
And now people are angry at ME3.

The cycle will continue as long as people feel they have an inalienable right to never be disappointed, or that their money entitles them to be rude or condescending to others, or that their opinions are the only, best, or right ones.

People are angry at ME3 because you made promises like 16 endings, decisions are important for the ending, blablabla but you don't keep it. Everything a lie. One impersonal ending in three colors was all we got.

DA2 was a joke, not because it wasn't DAO, because you made again promises you don't keep (10 years of Hawke's life, we got 7 years). And the level recycling was a colossal cheek.

For the other games I can't say much. I loved KOTOR and especially Dragon Age Origins.
The other games I never played. (yeah I know, I didn't play BG, shame on me )

[kbct]

Gigamantis wrote...

The scale of this reaction isn't typical but the reaction itself is VERY typical.  

Most people agree with that statement. Fans will always complain. However, the ME3 sh!tstorm stands alone when using any measurable metric for comparison.

[tiger-tron]

Gigamantis wrote...

tiger-tron wrote...

Stanley Woo wrote...
And now people are angry at ME3.

Yeah, for good reason.

Obviously people will moan about sequels, but lets be honest for a minute, the moaning is justified.

Only it isn't justified. 

Honestly, though, you people cry wolf about games being horrible so much no one would take you seriously even if you were justified. 

Thing is, Mass Effect's 3 ending is the only thing that really gets under my skin as there is a strong feeling of entitlement after all the promises etc, but you know the story already.

I'm not one to complain and 'cry wolf', there may have been things that dissapointed me in ME3, but on the whole I loved it. The overall consensus however, is that the ending hate is justified and I'm in agreement.

[Gigamantis]

kbct wrote...

Gigamantis wrote...

The scale of this reaction isn't typical but the reaction itself is VERY typical.  

Most people agree with that statement. Fans will always complain. However, the ME3 sh!tstorm stands alone when using any measurable metric for comparison.

Again, that remains to be seen.  All we know now is that the trolling effort is a more dedicated one, not necessarily a bigger one.  Online polls are spammable as are review websites.  The only real metric we have is sales and those have been pretty good. 

[addiction21]

masterthehero wrote...

liesandpropaganda wrote...
But! Nobody got mad when BG was out because it was BG!

badum-tsh

That game came out in 1998, if the internet were what it is now back then, I guarantee you they would have gotten mad.

It would of gone something like this.

"How dare you BioWare. You are turning your back on your loyal mech simulator (Shattered Steel) and action platformer thing (whatever you want to call MDK2) for the D&D crowd. You need to stop doing what you want and do what I want!"

Then something about console wars and BioWare selling out for the D&D IP. Like they were acused of doing for KoTOR and Lucas Arts.

[aries1001]

In my 14 years of gaming, I've only come across one game that truly deserved an 0; John Romero's Daikatana; the demo didn't even work. If I were in a good mood, I'd award it a 1/10 or maybe 2/10. The game's demo did start up and so did the game, I'd guess. Daikatana was a horrible, terrible and broken game, if ever there was one. And rightly so. DA2 was not even near this level of broken. I found it to be a very enjoyable game that is in my top three games of all time.

As for reviews of games, here are my thoughts about this subject:
Also, it seems that today the average game are getting 8/10 while good games are getting 8.5/10 and great games are getting 9/10 or above. This is not really Bioware's problem or challenge, more a challenge and problem of gaming journalism in this day and age. 10 years ago, I remember reading reviews from IGN and Gamespot where good games would get maybe 7/10 or 7.5/10 - and they were really fun to play. Not so today, it seems. As such, I trust demos, I trust fan reviews and review from fansites like here or rpgwatch.com etc.

As for the adverts and commercials, this is my take on them:
The only gripe I'd agree with that most of us can have with the ME3 game is that the adverts and commercials did say 'radically different endings'; they also spoke of '16 different endings' (in interviews, I think?). To me, the endings, from what I've seen on youtube, are not radically different and there are not 16 different endings. There might be 16 different outcomes to the game, depending on what you did throughout all three games, and the endings maybe seen as different from each other, but not radically.

As said, Bioware and EA, should learn how to phrase their pr-speak and adverts and commercials better.

[Gigamantis]

slyguy200 wrote...

Gigamantis wrote...

kbct wrote...

Gigamantis wrote...

The scale of this reaction isn't typical but the reaction itself is VERY typical.  

Most people agree with that statement. Fans will always complain. However, the ME3 sh!tstorm stands alone when using any measurable metric for comparison.

Again, that remains to be seen.  All we know now is that the trolling effort is a more dedicated one, not necessarily a bigger one.  Online polls are spammable as are review websites.  The only real metric we have is sales and those have been pretty good. 

Ummmmmm, No, they could have been better.

Ummmmmm, it was the best selling game in Bioware's history. 

[kbct]

Gigamantis wrote...

kbct wrote...

Gigamantis wrote...

The scale of this reaction isn't typical but the reaction itself is VERY typical.  

Most people agree with that statement. Fans will always complain. However, the ME3 sh!tstorm stands alone when using any measurable metric for comparison.

Again, that remains to be seen.  All we know now is that the trolling effort is a more dedicated one, not necessarily a bigger one.  Online polls are spammable as are review websites.  The only real metric we have is sales and those have been pretty good. 

The sales figures we see are estimates. We won't know how many units have been sold, how many they need to sell to breakeven, how many units have been returned, or how the discounting will affect the profit margin.

What we DO SEE are the polls - both in terms of unprecedented size and skew. We see the large number of negative user reviews. We see the huge attention from the non-gaming media like CBS, Wall Street Journal, Der Spiegel, New York Daily News, CNN, BBC, Forbes, New Yorker, and MSNBC. We see the Retake movement raise $80K for charity. We see the controversy mentioned for several paragraphs in Wikipedia. We see the huge presence on Facebook. We see EA win the 2012 Worst Company in America award. We see BBB weigh in on false advertising.

We see a lot of things contributing to this perfect sh!tstorm. It's unprecedented.

Modifié par kbct, 12 avril 2012 - 05:59 .

[Kuari999]

Gigamantis wrote...
I'm not denying the reaction was big, but it's for the same reasons as every other crapstorm we've seen.  It's gamers feeling betrayed.  You've clearly never seen D&D fans raging about more current D&D based games.  Just as much passion; just as much "betrayal" but not as many people.  ME3's storm is only bigger because ME3 is bigger.  RPG gamers just center their entire lives around gaming more than people who play most other genres, so they take things more personally. 

Also, the thing about internet polls is they always ask the right people to get the results they want.  The right people aren't very hard to find.  Internet polls are also VERY SPAMMABLE.  100 people running spambots through proxies could generate those numbers.  ME3 clearly has some dedicated trolls on this whole ending thing so I wouldn't doubt it.  My point is that internet polling is meaningless for a myriad of reasons. 

The scale of this reaction isn't typical but the reaction itself is VERY typical.  

Actually, a good poll isn't that easy to spam.  It'd be time consuming and limited, especially the ones that record IP addresses, or in the case of the ones on this site?  Require registered accounts.  Now evidence in the case of the ones here would be easy to come by for BioWare...  they could easily find out how many of the people voted actually have the game and the like.

A lot of what you stated are reasons why its hard to take internet polls alone, BUT, here's the big but, a margin of error like the one you describe is near impossible to come by.  You'd need more than a basic hacking program, a whole lot more, and something of that scale can easily be detected.  There's a reason BioWare hasn't tried stating the things you are, because it would be wrong.  Internet polling isn't perfect, but it IS considered a professionally acceptable option to some level, usually to base future polling off of.  At this point, the next step I'd say for Retake if they wanted to really show how strong their position was would be to find game stores they could stand in front of and give surveys out at.  I don't think the results would change much if they asked the question simply and unbiasedly just like they did with the largest poll on the subject here.

Anyways, aspects of this situation are typical, but there's plenty that are not, the largest of which being the fact that a VERY VERY specific issue is targetted.  The typical reaction is scattered and unspecific generally.  There are also a lot of other factors that make this atypical.  You can't look at it simply as "oh, people always complain".  You have to look at the methods, the subject matter, organization, etc etc.

Most importantly, if the size of the audience was what determined it, Skyrim should be causing more of a ****storm than this game. (in fact, I CHALLENGE you to find anything to this scale involving Skyrim. Almost nothing but praise for that game left right and center)

Modifié par Kuari999, 12 avril 2012 - 06:00 .

[Calians]

remember....DA2 actually caused riots



And not to mention I thought games were to be improved rather than...go backwards? if thats even possible:huh:

Modifié par Calians, 12 avril 2012 - 06:02 .

[Gigamantis]

kbct wrote...

Gigamantis wrote...

kbct wrote...

Gigamantis wrote...

The scale of this reaction isn't typical but the reaction itself is VERY typical.  

Most people agree with that statement. Fans will always complain. However, the ME3 sh!tstorm stands alone when using any measurable metric for comparison.

Again, that remains to be seen.  All we know now is that the trolling effort is a more dedicated one, not necessarily a bigger one.  Online polls are spammable as are review websites.  The only real metric we have is sales and those have been pretty good. 

The sales figures we see are estimates. We won't know how many units have been sold, how many they need to sell to breakeven, how many units have been returned, or how the discounting will affect the profit margin.

What we DO SEE are the polls - both in terms of unprecedented size and skew. We see the large number of negative user reviews. We see the huge attention from the non-gaming media like CBS, Wall Street Journal, Der Spiegel, New York Daily News, CNN, BBC, Forbes, New Yorker, and MSNBC. We see the Retake movement raise $80K for charity. We see the controversy mentioned for several paragraphs in Wikipedia. We see the huge presense on Facebook. We see EA win the 2012 Worst Company in America award. We see BBB weigh on false advertising.

We see a lot of things contributing to this perfect sh!tstorm. It's unprecedented.

Online polls are meaningless.  They always have been and they always will be.  An online reaction like this may be unprecedented but it doesn't mean anything.  We don't know the actual size of these polls person by person and if they're even remotely legitimate. 

The sales estimates are the only legitimate information we have and they're promising.  If someone wants to conduct a scientific poll and draw conclusions from it they should.  Passing around an internet poll is beyond poinltess, though. 

[kbct]

Gigamantis wrote...

Online polls are meaningless.  They always have been and they always will be.  An online reaction like this may be unprecedented but it doesn't mean anything.  We don't know the actual size of these polls person by person and if they're even remotely legitimate. 

The sales estimates are the only legitimate information we have and they're promising.  If someone wants to conduct a scientific poll and draw conclusions from it they should.  Passing around an internet poll is beyond poinltess, though. 

A random sample of only about 750 people can predict the a population of 10 million with a margin of error of 3-5%.

We know the BSN poll of 71,500 people shows 2% liked the ending as-is.

Let's say BSN poll is a random sample (we know it's not). A sample of 71,500 would have a margin of error of less than 1%, but let's call it 1% for now.

Under a normal distribution, the entire population people that liked the ending as-is would be 2% +/- 1%. 68% of the time it would be between 1% and 3%, 95% of the time it would be between 0% and 4%, and 99% of the time it would be between 0% and 5%.

A self-selecting sample has predictive power if the sample is large enough and the results are lopsided enough. Both criteria exist in the BSN poll. It is almost 100 times larger than what is required for a random sample. It is so skewed that it really can't be any more skewed. I mean, what is lower than 2%???

So, even if we use a 20% margin of error, 68% of the time, the percentage would be between 0% and 22% and 95% of the time, the percentage would be between 0% and 42%. That's still not a majority.

The thing is with a sample size so large, the margin of error won't be 20%. It will be less. So we have even higher confidence that the people that liked the ending as-is is not a majority.

Nothing is certain unless we ask every man, woman, and child what they thought of the ending, but we can state with a high degree of confidence that the majority didn't like the ending as-is.

Modifié par kbct, 12 avril 2012 - 06:04 .

[Dridengx]

kbct wrote...

In my opinion, the fans were right. I shouldn't have listened to the professional reviews. They have a conflict of interest. First, they need to cosy up to gaming companies to get interviews and other types of access. Second, they receive ad revenue from gaming companies.

In the future, I want to read a mix of fan reviews before I make a purchase decision.

I call BS on that. With a professional review you have a 10 scale that is consistant. If a game is a 6 is pretty decent with problems, if it looks good you will probably like it. 7 or 8 its good. 9 or 10 you'l like it, probably love it.

Let's not lie almost everyone here in many threads admited ME3 is an amazing game "until the last couple minutes" you can't rate a game a 1/10 or 2/10 because of that like you guys did on amazon and metacrtic. THAT"S precisely why fan reviews are pointless, it's all fanboys, whiners, nitpickers, and biased reviews. fan review is about as useless as a toothpick to shovel snow

Modifié par Dridengx, 12 avril 2012 - 06:10 .

[Calians]

^ I rated the game an 8/10 in my opinion. Hope thats not too bad

Modifié par Calians, 12 avril 2012 - 06:12 .

[Gigamantis]

Kuari999 wrote...

Gigamantis wrote...
I'm not denying the reaction was big, but it's for the same reasons as every other crapstorm we've seen.  It's gamers feeling betrayed.  You've clearly never seen D&D fans raging about more current D&D based games.  Just as much passion; just as much "betrayal" but not as many people.  ME3's storm is only bigger because ME3 is bigger.  RPG gamers just center their entire lives around gaming more than people who play most other genres, so they take things more personally. 

Also, the thing about internet polls is they always ask the right people to get the results they want.  The right people aren't very hard to find.  Internet polls are also VERY SPAMMABLE.  100 people running spambots through proxies could generate those numbers.  ME3 clearly has some dedicated trolls on this whole ending thing so I wouldn't doubt it.  My point is that internet polling is meaningless for a myriad of reasons. 

The scale of this reaction isn't typical but the reaction itself is VERY typical.  

Actually, a good poll isn't that easy to spam.  It'd be time consuming and limited, especially the ones that record IP addresses, or in the case of the ones on this site?  Require registered accounts.  Now evidence in the case of the ones here would be easy to come by for BioWare...  they could easily find out how many of the people voted actually have the game and the like.

A lot of what you stated are reasons why its hard to take internet polls alone, BUT, here's the big but, a margin of error like the one you describe is near impossible to come by.  You'd need more than a basic hacking program, a whole lot more, and something of that scale can easily be detected.  There's a reason BioWare hasn't tried stating the things you are, because it would be wrong.  Internet polling isn't perfect, but it IS considered a professionally acceptable option to some level, usually to base future polling off of.  At this point, the next step I'd say for Retake if they wanted to really show how strong their position was would be to find game stores they could stand in front of and give surveys out at.  I don't think the results would change much if they asked the question simply and unbiasedly just like they did with the largest poll on the subject here.

Anyways, aspects of this situation are typical, but there's plenty that are not, the largest of which being the fact that a VERY VERY specific issue is targetted.  The typical reaction is scattered and unspecific generally.  There are also a lot of other factors that make this atypical.  You can't look at it simply as "oh, people always complain".  You have to look at the methods, the subject matter, organization, etc etc.

Most importantly, if the size of the audience was what determined it, Skyrim should be causing more of a ****storm than this game. (in fact, I CHALLENGE you to find anything to this scale involving Skyrim. Almost nothing but praise for that game left right and center)

No company is going to waste time even addressing an internet poll for the reasons I'm mentioning.  Spambots run through proxies could create 10's of thousands of unique votes with unique IP addresses in a matter of days.  It's time consuming but this "movement" is very invested in their cause.  I'm sorry you didn't already know this, but internet polls are less than nothing.  Polls not conducted under strict scientific criteria aren't worth the time you wasted creating them.

Now there is something very specific people are complaining about this time, but that doesn't make this atypical.  The ONLY think atypical about this is the method, which involved spamming polls and opinion sites, but it's the same result.  The Skyrim forums were just as bad as these on release, and more justifiably so as the game was pretty much broken on one console. 

Complaining is just complaining until there's a real impact.  Bioware is enjoying record sales with ME3 and hurting sales is the only way a sh**storm matters. 

[masterthehero]

That's perfectly logical kbct, except that most people that frequent the BSN forums are not the majority but rather the minority.

A lot of people still stay away from forums like these, and with such a rabid fanbase it would not be surprising to see the results skewed in their favor.

[Dridengx]

kbct wrote...

Gigamantis wrote...

Online polls are meaningless.  They always have been and they always will be.  An online reaction like this may be unprecedented but it doesn't mean anything.  We don't know the actual size of these polls person by person and if they're even remotely legitimate. 

The sales estimates are the only legitimate information we have and they're promising.  If someone wants to conduct a scientific poll and draw conclusions from it they should.  Passing around an internet poll is beyond poinltess, though. 

A random sample of only about 750 people can predict the a population of 10 million with a margin of error of 3-5%.

We know the BSN poll of 71,500 people shows 2% liked the ending as-is.

Let's say BSN poll is a random sample (we know it's not). A sample of 71,500 would have a margin of error of less than 1%, but let's call it 1% for now.

Under a normal distribution, the entire population people that liked the ending as-is would be 2% +/- 1%. 68% of the time it would be between 1% and 3%, 95% of the time it would be between 0% and 4%, and 99% of the time it would be between 0% and 5%.

A self-selecting sample has predictive power if the sample is large enough and the results are lopsided enough. Both criteria exist in the BSN poll. It is almost 100 times larger than what is required for a random sample. It is so skewed that it really can't be any more skewed. I mean, what is lower than 2%???

So, even if we use a 20% margin of error, 68% of the time, the percentage would be between 0% and 22% and 95% of the time, the percentage would be between 0% and 42%. That's still not a majority.

The thing is with a sample size so large, the margin of error won't be 20%. It will be less. So we have even higher confidence that the people that liked the ending as-is is not a majority.

Nothing is certain unless we ask every man, woman, and child what they thought of the ending, but we can state with a high degree of confidence that the majority didn't like the ending as-is.

problem with your 'stats' is you are basing the percentage off the place where people hate the game the most and using that against people that enjoyed it. OMG only 2% of people on my poll at the most hated forums liked the ending soo we'll use that on a larger scale to figure out how many people liked the ending herpderp. How about we use logical stats like SALES compared to anti enders? people who do this for a living already made the claim that 90% of people who like something don't comment!

Do you visit websites for your favorite jeans, tv, brands, etc etc? no. You go places to whine and moan like you people are doing now. all of you claim to love cdprojekt red, bethesda but spend your lives on BSN

Modifié par Dridengx, 12 avril 2012 - 06:17 .

[Gigamantis]

kbct wrote...

Gigamantis wrote...

Online polls are meaningless.  They always have been and they always will be.  An online reaction like this may be unprecedented but it doesn't mean anything.  We don't know the actual size of these polls person by person and if they're even remotely legitimate. 

The sales estimates are the only legitimate information we have and they're promising.  If someone wants to conduct a scientific poll and draw conclusions from it they should.  Passing around an internet poll is beyond poinltess, though. 

A random sample of only about 750 people can predict the a population of 10 million with a margin of error of 3-5%.

We know the BSN poll of 71,500 people shows 2% liked the ending as-is.

Let's say BSN poll is a random sample (we know it's not). A sample of 71,500 would have a margin of error of less than 1%, but let's call it 1% for now.

Under a normal distribution, the entire population people that liked the ending as-is would be 2% +/- 1%. 68% of the time it would be between 1% and 3%, 95% of the time it would be between 0% and 4%, and 99% of the time it would be between 0% and 5%.

A self-selecting sample has predictive power if the sample is large enough and the results are lopsided enough. Both criteria exist in the BSN poll. It is almost 100 times larger than what is required for a random sample. It is so skewed that it really can't be any more skewed. I mean, what is lower than 2%???

So, even if we use a 20% margin of error, 68% of the time, the percentage would be between 0% and 22% and 95% of the time, the percentage would be between 0% and 42%. That's still not a majority.

The thing is with a sample size so large, the margin of error won't be 20%. It will be less. So we have even higher confidence that the people that liked the ending as-is is not a majority.

Nothing is certain unless we ask every man, woman, and child what they thought of the ending, but we can state with a high degree of confidence that the majority didn't like the ending as-is.

You're talking about sampling for scientific polling, which has nothing to do with a random internet poll.  If not strictly monitored one person can account for over 1,000 votes on a poll.  If conducted in a place where you know people who are upset will gather, like a forum, it guarantees lopsided results with no base in reality.

If I wanted to devote a lot of time to it my friends and I could construct a poll with 10's of thousands of votes from unique IP addresses that say whatever we want them to say.  Internet polling is meaningless.  Scientific polling has it's merits but that's not what we're talking about. 

[Kuari999]

Gigamantis wrote...

No company is going to waste time even addressing an internet poll for the reasons I'm mentioning.  Spambots run through proxies could create 10's of thousands of unique votes with unique IP addresses in a matter of days.  It's time consuming but this "movement" is very invested in their cause.  I'm sorry you didn't already know this, but internet polls are less than nothing.  Polls not conducted under strict scientific criteria aren't worth the time you wasted creating them.

Now there is something very specific people are complaining about this time, but that doesn't make this atypical.  The ONLY think atypical about this is the method, which involved spamming polls and opinion sites, but it's the same result.  The Skyrim forums were just as bad as these on release, and more justifiably so as the game was pretty much broken on one console. 

Complaining is just complaining until there's a real impact.  Bioware is enjoying record sales with ME3 and hurting sales is the only way a sh**storm matters. 

Professional pollers, socioligists and many other professionals disagree with your view on online polling.  Its just often taken with a grain of salt and other aspects are looked at as well.  I know perfectly what you describe from both a programming perspective and a sociological perspective.  I'm not an expert, but I know how polling works and how its used.  So here's the big question....  what's your evidence that the polls were spammed?  You've jumped to this conclusion based off what?  Not to mention the results came very quickly.  We also don't know the sales numbers since this fiasco hit full swing, but its telling that BioWare is making an effort to react to it I think.

I find it a bit odd that you think the Skyrim forums were just as bad though...  a majority of that was asking about bug fixes and the like.  Hate that wasn't was unspecific and obvious trolling along the lines of "this game sucks!" with little reason.  That is frankly typical, but its a small scale thing.  It didn't happen anything to this degree.  If asking for work arounds to bugs and general irritation involving them is something you consider the same as this situation...  frankly, you're really grasping at straws at this point.  You're just looking for something that supports your view though there are plenty of indications against it.

[Destr1er]

Apparently he's ok with EA spamming polls and buying reviews. But the users are a pack of idiots and their opinions don't matter.

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

Vocal Minority *evil/troll face*
End of Line!

[Gigamantis]

Kuari999 wrote...

Gigamantis wrote...

No company is going to waste time even addressing an internet poll for the reasons I'm mentioning.  Spambots run through proxies could create 10's of thousands of unique votes with unique IP addresses in a matter of days.  It's time consuming but this "movement" is very invested in their cause.  I'm sorry you didn't already know this, but internet polls are less than nothing.  Polls not conducted under strict scientific criteria aren't worth the time you wasted creating them.

Now there is something very specific people are complaining about this time, but that doesn't make this atypical.  The ONLY think atypical about this is the method, which involved spamming polls and opinion sites, but it's the same result.  The Skyrim forums were just as bad as these on release, and more justifiably so as the game was pretty much broken on one console. 

Complaining is just complaining until there's a real impact.  Bioware is enjoying record sales with ME3 and hurting sales is the only way a sh**storm matters. 

Professional pollers, socioligists and many other professionals disagree with your view on online polling.  Its just often taken with a grain of salt and other aspects are looked at as well.  I know perfectly what you describe from both a programming perspective and a sociological perspective.  I'm not an expert, but I know how polling works and how its used.  So here's the big question....  what's your evidence that the polls were spammed?  You've jumped to this conclusion based off what?  Not to mention the results came very quickly.  We also don't know the sales numbers since this fiasco hit full swing, but its telling that BioWare is making an effort to react to it I think.

I find it a bit odd that you think the Skyrim forums were just as bad though...  a majority of that was asking about bug fixes and the like.  Hate that wasn't was unspecific and obvious trolling along the lines of "this game sucks!" with little reason.  That is frankly typical, but its a small scale thing.  It didn't happen anything to this degree.  If asking for work arounds to bugs and general irritation involving them is something you consider the same as this situation...  frankly, you're really grasping at straws at this point.  You're just looking for something that supports your view though there are plenty of indications against it.

Online polls can be made viable, but what we're talking about is a hack-job that was taken from one carefully selected forum to the next.  The fact it can't be verified that the poll was not spammed instantly makes it irrelevant for any purpose other than entertainment.  You can't use a potentially tainted poll as evidence of anything. 

The hate for Skyrim was essentially about the game being broken to varying degrees of being completely unplayable.  As typical with Bethesda releases the game engine was a horribly optimized disaster and people were severely pissed off.  The forums were easily just as bad, but the complaints were a variety of technical issues instead of one specific one.