The Four Poll Formats on versus4.fun, Explained

Arguments in game communities have shapes. Two things against each other. Something that feels too strong or too weak. A change that helped or hurt. versus4.fun has one format for each shape, and the formats are fixed so that a result on one game reads the same way as a result on another. This post goes through the four.

VS: which one wins right now?

The matchup format. Two named sides, one question, two answers. Character against character, weapon against weapon, map against map, anything that the community argues about as a pair. The answer is a split between the two, on the current patch.

VS is the right format when the argument is literally about two things. It is the wrong format when the argument is about whether something is too strong in general; that is a Power check.

Nerf / Keep / Buff: what should happen to it?

The balance format. One subject, three answers: nerf it, keep it as it is, or buff it. The subject is a thing in the game, a character, an item, a mechanic, and the answers are what the community thinks the developers should do.

This is a wish, not an assessment. A community can want a nerf for something that is not statistically the strongest, because it is unpleasant to play against. That is useful information, and it is why this format exists separately from the next one.

Power check: how strong is it in the current patch?

The assessment format. One subject, three answers: OP, balanced or weak. The question is not what should happen but how strong the thing is right now, on this patch.

Power check and Nerf/Keep/Buff are often run on the same subject, and the pair is more informative than either alone. Something rated balanced on the power check and still heavily voted for a nerf is something the community dislikes for reasons other than strength. That gap is where the interesting discussions are.

Patch verdict: did this patch make the game better?

The update format. The subject is the patch itself, and the three answers are better, same or worse. It is the one format where the patch is the question rather than the context, and it is the quickest way to see how a community received an update.

Because every vote on versus4.fun is tied to the patch that was live when it was cast, a Patch verdict is naturally a snapshot of one update. The next patch gets its own verdict. Our post on why every vote is tied to a patch explains the mechanism.

Why the formats are fixed

A suggestion arrives as a sentence. When a person publishes it, it is placed into one of the four formats, with the subject or the pair named and the answers set. Fixed formats mean a result in one game is readable by someone who plays another, and they mean the site can show results in the same way everywhere. Custom formats would make every poll its own small puzzle.

Picking the format when you suggest

You do not have to choose the format on the suggest page; a person does that when publishing. It helps, though, to phrase the suggestion so the shape is obvious:

• “X or Y, who wins” is a VS
• “Should X be nerfed” is a Nerf/Keep/Buff
• “Is X too strong right now” is a Power check
• “Did the latest update help” is a Patch verdict

Our post on how to suggest a poll that gets picked covers the rest of what makes a suggestion easy to publish.

One subject, several formats

The same thing in a game can appear in more than one format at once, and that is normal. A new character might have a VS against the character it most often replaces, a Power check on its own strength and a Nerf / Keep / Buff on what people want done about it. Reading the three together is more informative than any one of them, and the game page is laid out so that polls on the same subject sit near each other.

The one format a single thing never appears in is Patch verdict, because that format’s subject is always the update itself.

What stays fixed and what changes

The question text, the answer set and the way a result is shown are fixed per format, and that never varies by game. What changes is everything else: the subject, the patch, the count and the split. A visitor who understands one Power check understands every Power check on the site, which is the whole reason the formats are fixed.

Patches are the other thing that changes, and they change the result without changing the question. When a new patch ships, each poll keeps its question and starts a fresh count, so the same card can show a different answer on consecutive patches. That is the system working as intended, and how to read a verdict is about not misreading it.

Reading across formats

A game page shows polls in all four formats side by side. Reading them together is where the picture forms: the VS results tell you the matchups, the Power checks tell you what is strong, the Nerf/Keep/Buff results tell you what people want changed, and the Patch verdict tells you how the last change landed. The home page shows the most active of these across games at any moment.