[Suggestion] In Game Survey

[Shirlias.8104]

Hi everybody,

 

Here on the forum we discuss about almost everything, but since it's a forum let's start with some premises

 

* It has many threads.

* Not all players read the forum.

* Not all players who read the forum post or take part to a discussion ( lurkers ).

* Anet staff does not take part to every single thread ( which is logic, obviously, but it just serves to claim that somehow a sharing between staff and community is missing in terms of **long time goal** or simply to understand/contribuite to what's **work in progress**

 

That said, wouldn't be nice a multiple choice in game survey ( maybe every 3, or 6 cause big patches are every 6, months if i recall correctly ) in order to better understand the community and on the other hand to receive a feedback from a large number of players?

 

This does not mean that ANET must follow what the community says, obviously, but that it can delevolp content with more valuable data ( i am sure it could help a lot ).

 

Your opinion?

Could a survey every X months be useful or not?

Whether agree or not, add something about ( why not, how you would make it, an alternative, why it is fine the way it is, etc... )

 

;)

[Hevoskuuri.3891]

I agree. In-game surveys would present Anet with very valuable data from a much wider population than they get now with the forums and Reddit, since it's like you said, only a very tiny percentage of the playerbase actively posts here. With surveys, many more voices would be heard. And if they make it a simple "what is your opinion on X on a scale of 1-10?" or "should X be implemented into the game/removed/changed?" they don't have to go through walls of text, but will see the general opinion straight away as the system calculates the average results.

 

Pushing out a survey with every big patch would be wonderful. And if the game engine wouldn't allow this, they could put up a website like they have done before, and link it in the launcher, so that everyone would see it even if they don't actively come to the forums.

[GrubySzymek.1362]

I remember the topic of in-game surveys has been present within community for a long time, even on old forums. We have forum polls now which is very nice and unexpected improvement. Maybe we should give it time for people to spread awareness about this so more players may be interested in participating. If it won't work, in game polls are definitely the way to go. One thing, I'm not sure if Anet is interested in polling their decisions.

[Shirlias.8104]

> @Kheldorn.5123 said:

> I remember the topic of in-game surveys has been present within community for a long time, even on old forums. We have forum polls now which is very nice and unexpected improvement. Maybe we should give it time for people to spread awareness about this so more players may be interested in participating. If it won't work, in game polls are definitely the way to go. One thing, I'm not sure if Anet is interested in polling their decisions.

 

As said, it's not for polling their decisions, but to gather data on the quality of the game.

They could ask i.e. **What is your favourite map?** or **Do you enjoy playing with mounts?** or else **Do you prefer a map with or without a meta?** and **Do you like Fractals? Which is your favourite one?** and so on.

 

The questions could be direct or indiret, but still they could listen to a wider opinion, then discuss themselves about.

 

 

[Zaltys.7649]

Yep, if they want accurate feedback, then that's the way to go.

Considering the total number of players compared to the number of regulars on the forum, it's clear that only a tiny fraction of players post on the forum.

[ThomasC.1056]

I remember during TESO beta, there were a lot of in-game surveys. Like, after you cleared the event chain of a specific place, "Did you enjoy that event ?" "Did it feel fulfilling ?" "How were the dialogs ?" etc. It was the beta, so it was a good thing, though I'm not sure it wouldn't become troublesome after a while.

 

Having that kind of surveys for events, instances, stories chapters or things of such significance helps gather a lot of data about difficulty tweaking, mobs, general scenario and storytelling directions etc. In that sense, it can really be a good thing to have them. The issue is you also need to enforce a sorta strict typology of what you release in-game so that data becomes meaningful, otherwise, you'll get a lot of numbers about what players liked or not, without really being able to transpose them to other/future content, or compare to current content.

[Dawdler.8521]

We had votes for WvW, where Anet listened to what players wanted.

 

Players that nearly destroyed WvW with the DBL voting disaster.

 

Prosiming idea, really.

[killermanjaro.5670]

This would be a great thing to do, a lot more people would be more likely to be involved with feedback if they can do it from within the game. I think the data would be more balanced and accurate as well, as they would get feedback on what is positive about things, not just negatives. Most of the time people will only take time to post on external forums if they want to complain about something they don't like, most people don't bother to post to praise something, or to say something is fine.

 

And as you mention a lot (probably even the majority) of players probably don't visit external forums like here, reddit etc, and out of those that do many tend to lurk and read rather than actively post.

 

This is evident just by looking at the numbers on the front page here. On average (excluding the stickies) threads tend to have 700-1000 views, and maybe about 50-100 posts,. even the sticked official PoF feedback thread only has ~13k views, and ~650 posts (which probably includes multiple views and posts from the same users). I don't know how many active players the game has, but in the grand scheme of the whole player base that can't even be 1%.

 

As a result Anet might end up making some changes because there are threads about "x is too hard", "we want/don't want x", "x map/mechanic sucks etc", but in reality most of the player base might have been fine with "x" to start with, so may not have wanted it changed/it needn't have been changed, they just either don't visit forums, or didn't feel the need to post to just say "x is great/ x is fine, no need to change anything".

 

It would be much better if Anet had feedback from within the game as they'd more likely get a wider sample of opinions, rather than just having to work with feedback from what is ultimately a miniscule number of the player base, and generally will be made up of people who have only come to rant about something.

 

 

[TheQuickFox.3826]

> @Dawdler.8521 said:

> We had votes for WvW, where Anet listened to what players wanted.

>

> Players that nearly destroyed WvW with the DBL voting disaster.

>

> Prosiming idea, really.

 

Players didn't vote for desert borderlands. The option to ditch all dbl and go back to alpine was not an option to vote for. So we ended up with the closest alternative.

[MithranArkanere.8957]

There could be NPCs that show a panel to vote on things, like which BL weapon skin set they want to return, or show them pictures of artwork for possible new sets so they can choose the one they want to see next, or changes for WvW.

 

Going further into the idea, we could have "crowdfunding" of stuff. An NPC would have a panel showcasing different entries of possible new content, and when enough people pay for one thing, it gets released for all, and those who paid get it or part of it for no extra cost if they paid enough, based on how much they paid, while the rest of the players would have to acquire it with gems, as an in-game reward, by crafting, etc. Such a thing could be used for all sorts of things, like different locations of personal housing, new legendary weapons, armor and outfit designs, weapon sets...

And what if what you paid for doesn't get released and it's cancelled because other things get voted instead? Then the gems you paid get refunded and you can spend them in other things, including other crowdfund projects.

 

There could even be a workshop in which players present designs for stuff like weapons and armor, and players vote for the ones they want to get done, and when the stuff get released, the authors get a gem reward.

 

As far as I can tell the trading post is basically a secured webpage embedded in a panel. It can't be impossible to do the same for surveys.