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Recently, I posted a homebrew Warlock otherworldly patron and got 3 downvotes, 173 views, and 1 answer. Meanwhile, another homebrew Warlock otherworldly patron got 2k views, 14 upvotes, and one good answer. How does this happen?

I viewed the other question and I saw mine to be superior, providing commentary and reasons for each feature. The other did not.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Just for completeness: do you have a judgment on whether the answer you received was good? You accepted it which implies some favorable opinion, but in this post you describe the other post as receiving "one good answer" while describing yours as receiving "1 answer." I don't know whether to read into the omission that you think the answer you received is lower quality than the one the other question received. \$\endgroup\$
    – nitsua60 Mod
    Apr 19, 2019 at 0:41
  • \$\begingroup\$ I accepted it so as to post a revised answer. The answer I received pointed out problems, but no solutions. \$\endgroup\$
    – TheCentaur
    Apr 19, 2019 at 12:25
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    \$\begingroup\$ (I'll note that as of writing this comment, the more-popular post you link has 1,688 views. Surely when this post was written (12 hours ago) that count was lower. It strikes me as a bit disingenuous to round whatever that number was up to "2k" while reporting your post's views at 173.) \$\endgroup\$
    – nitsua60 Mod
    Apr 19, 2019 at 14:06

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Views are easy: the other question hit the "Hot Network Questions" list 21 hours ago. Yours has not.

Downvotes are a little tougher: even we elected mods cannot see who downvoted your post, nor when the downvotes came in (so as to time them against the comments the post received). But the commenters left some obvious reasons they might have downvoted your post. So there's some guidance there.

One other thing jumps out from the comments: the one you left at 14:57:53Z is rather dismissive, if not plain rude, toward commenters who are presumptively trying in good faith to help you. Again, I can't know if anyone downvoted you in response to that, but I suggest you try and find a way to be nicer to people trying to help you. I wouldn't be surprised if you've generated some animus there.

The patrons themselves provide the last obvious difference between the two posts. The other post is based off of a well-known and established part of D&D lore, the Lady of Pain. (And as some comments make clear, the enduring lack of 5e's support for Planescape/Sigil/Lady of Pain material has some stackizens particularly enjoying that post.) Yours, by comparison, is tied to an "great lord over the chaotic Undead" that readers didn't get much direction from--and some of them told you so. It's not too hard to imagine that "people like the Lady of Pain more than your undead lord" accounts for some of the difference.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I saw that it was dismissive, but some of the comments did not help at all. For example, what does the author Brandon Mull have to do with my homebrew? \$\endgroup\$
    – TheCentaur
    Apr 19, 2019 at 12:26
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    \$\begingroup\$ You are asking a bunch of people to help you for free; being rude and dismissive leads to them not helping you. That's fair if that's the tradeoff you want to make, but if you're asking "well why isn't my question getting the traction others' is" - that's why. \$\endgroup\$
    – mxyzplk
    Apr 19, 2019 at 12:55
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    \$\begingroup\$ If a comment is not helpful you're free to ignore it, respond "thanks for taking a moment, but that doesn't really help me because _____," or flag it as "not helpful." (For my part, I'll say in that case a custom flag from an OP with a message like "not helpful: I'm not going to edit based on this comment" makes it super-easy for me to just accept the flag and delete the comment.) Or you can respond dismissively, and I think mxyzplk summarizes that nicely above. \$\endgroup\$
    – nitsua60 Mod
    Apr 19, 2019 at 14:02
  • \$\begingroup\$ thank you; I thought flags were for serious problems. \$\endgroup\$
    – TheCentaur
    Apr 19, 2019 at 14:20
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    \$\begingroup\$ Flags certainly are useful for serious problems, but I'd say the majority of the flags we handle involve comment clean-up. Functionally, they're best for anything a site user thinks should be done, but which only the elected mods have the ability to do. That ranges from "this person's swearing at users for no reason, kick 'em out" to "I've deleted my half of this comment-convo, need you to do the other half." \$\endgroup\$
    – nitsua60 Mod
    Apr 19, 2019 at 14:25
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Not to put too fine a point on it, the other post you reference looks a lot more like a warlock patron than yours does. As several comments pointed out, offering 3 choices of feature at most levels isn't normal, and it's additional complexity on one of the most complex classes, arguably the most complex. It also makes it a much more difficult question for anyone to answer - the amount of content for answerers to review and address is considerably more.

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    \$\begingroup\$ I think this is the main issue: reviewing a homebrew subclass is already a lot of work. Each new option you give increases the work exponentially, since we also have to think about how each option interacts with each other option. I think a lot of people (myself included) saw your post as too much to tackle. That doesn't mean it's bad, just that fewer people will put in the extra effort to answer it \$\endgroup\$
    – divibisan
    Apr 19, 2019 at 23:25

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