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Unofficial A17 Feedback Survey


enragedcamel

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The developers should do something like this for every alpha. At least once would be good even if they don't do it regularly. Empyrion has started doing it and it seems to be working out well for them.

 

http://survey.empyriongame.com/index.php/584288?lang=en

 

Example of their survey. Theirs doesn't require sign in though. There's good and bad to that. On one hand, it's easier for people to make multiple responses, but on the other hand, many people won't participate in the survey if they have to log in to do it, especially if they don't have an account created.

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There seems to be a boatload of new threads about A17. To add an alternative, more structured way of collecting feedback, I created this survey:

 

https://goo.gl/forms/Cs66bbZ0dz6klyqB3

 

(Requires sign in to limit each person to 1 submission.)

 

I hope the results prove useful to the devs.

 

That's a good idea. You got my votes ^^

 

Though its a bit 2-dimensional since we can't explain our picks, but at least we would be able to get a better picture of what needs to be addressed.

 

The "no opinion" choice is a two-sided blade if evaluated wrong. So I hope anyone looking at the results takes the more critical approach of evaluating this choice.

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I proposed something like this to Roland. Apparently they plan to get our feedback in a more structured way after the A17e has been online for a little longer - reason is that they feel like many players are still changing their opinion.

 

Let's see and hope they mean it. Regarding your survey - I would break it down however. Zombie AI has little to do with the block damage they do and can be addressed individually. Stealth system per se is good - however, the level of stealth required to not attract zombies is not balanced in my opinion. I think there were more than those two where i thought the answer could go either way.

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The problem is that for a survey to actually show the opinion of players, it need to be taken by a large cross-section of players - not just a self-selecting subset (players who post on the forum and have strong opinions).

 

Short of spamming out the survey link with the game (on the main menu or something), that's very hard to do.

 

Any survey just posted here (or even posted here and on the Steam discussion) is going to give results that are skewed to the point of uselessness.

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I disagree Tea.

Your hypothesis would mean that those with stronger opinions (pro or contra) are mostly on the forums.

But if that were true (most ppl just dislike using forums) then the ones in the middle are not going to give their opinions anyways.

So how do you suppose we "test" what the median is?

 

 

And even if you do, don't you think most ppl in the forums have taken the most time evaluating the game?

I know 7 ppl who have never been to the forums, most of them think the game is fine, no matter what TFPs change. Because they just want to play casual.

So if they are fine either way, we might as well try to find the best path for those who DO care.

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The problem is that for a survey to actually show the opinion of players, it need to be taken by a large cross-section of players - not just a self-selecting subset (players who post on the forum and have strong opinions).

 

Short of spamming out the survey link with the game (on the main menu or something), that's very hard to do.

 

Any survey just posted here (or even posted here and on the Steam discussion) is going to give results that are skewed to the point of uselessness.

 

I agree, eventhough I think its a good idea from OP - and there's no real better way of doing it- it will always be biased because of reaching only a small (fanatic) part of the playerbase. It should have a link in the launcher but I doubt TFP will ever do that as they have to react to the results, which they have never been really fond of doing.

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I disagree Tea.

Your hypothesis would mean that those with stronger opinions (pro or contra) are mostly on the forums.

But if that were true (most ppl just dislike using forums) then the ones in the middle are not going to give their opinions anyways.

So how do you suppose we "test" what the median is?

 

 

And even if you do, don't you think most ppl in the forums have taken the most time evaluating the game?

I know 7 ppl who have never been to the forums, most of them think the game is fine, no matter what TFPs change. Because they just want to play casual.

So if they are fine either way, we might as well try to find the best path for those who DO care.

 

It's not "my hypothesis" it's well-established Polling Methodology 101.

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So how do you suppose we "test" what the median is?

 

 

And even if you do, don't you think most ppl in the forums have taken the most time evaluating the game?

I know 7 ppl who have never been to the forums, most of them think the game is fine, no matter what TFPs change. Because they just want to play casual.

So if they are fine either way, we might as well try to find the best path for those who DO care.

 

Tell me Tea. I really want to know how you would do that.

You can't say its completly invalid, if that is the only data we can get.

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There seems to be a boatload of new threads about A17. To add an alternative, more structured way of collecting feedback, I created this survey:

 

https://goo.gl/forms/Cs66bbZ0dz6klyqB3

 

(Requires sign in to limit each person to 1 submission.)

 

I hope the results prove useful to the devs.

 

Just like modders fixing the game you just did the pimps' job. This is absolutely highly in their interest that they do this themselves. It's amazing that they are not trying to actually find out what people think. If they don't want to know - then they are just like every other developer *cough Bethesda*. If they didn't realize that they should ask these kinds of questions right now, then they need to get their act together as a company!

 

Cudos enragedcamel, good survey!

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I wouldn't put the quality of AI AND block damage they do into one question in the poll, because I like the new AI for the most part - that is once they spawn in the world, but I still don't like they are really excavators capable of destroying even the sturdiest of defenses in seconds which is the second part of the question, so those two things should be separated for those who actually like the AI itself, just not the balance of their power, but to be fair I would like to add that I also HATE the zombie spawn system which is ridiculous as they spawn right in front of you OR right behind your back after you made sure you cleared that freaking room, this breaks immersion greatly, but not sure if this should be seen as a part of the AI or not. When I think of AI, I think of the way they behave when they are already spawned, not the system that manages how and when exactly they spawn.

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Well, it's a nice way for us forum users to see momentary opinion about it. My group of 4 co-op friends had only time to play through two horde night (both day 7) till now. Not enough to really know anything.

 

I won't log into google from this browser, will not vote, sorry. But I'm interested in the results :rapture:

 

Just like modders fixing the game you just did the pimps' job. This is absolutely highly in their interest that they do this themselves. It's amazing that they are not trying to actually find out what people think.

 

The experimental is out for 2 weeks and has only one hasty bug fix pass applied, some balancing fixes are supposedly in the pipeline but not released yet. Roland said (I think even to you in another thread) that it is too early to make informed judgements. And at least in my case he is totally right, I definitely need more time to make up my mind, especially about the tower defense part. I have 2 new ideas at the moment that I first have to test out and I haven't even reached day 14, neither in the coop game nor in the SP game I started yesterday.

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Just like modders fixing the game you just did the pimps' job. This is absolutely highly in their interest that they do this themselves. It's amazing that they are not trying to actually find out what people think. If they don't want to know - then they are just like every other developer *cough Bethesda*. If they didn't realize that they should ask these kinds of questions right now, then they need to get their act together as a company!

 

Cudos enragedcamel, good survey!

 

Except Bethesda has many good things that just work intuitively and once you get the hang of it, there's still lower amount of things you would like to complain about than things you actually like and truly enjoy.

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I don't think you can or should lump zombie AI and block damage into a single question. I love one and hate the other. Just saying.

 

Exactly my thoughts I wrote one post above yours lol

 

This is a good poll overall though, you know it shows that people actually care for the better future of the game and it's also good to know that you're not alone in this. Results so far clearly show me that I share the same feelings of the majority of players who participated in this poll.

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Except Bethesda has many good things that just work intuitively and once you get the hang of it, there's still lower amount of things you would like to complain about than things you actually like and truly enjoy.

 

Except that you never participated in an experimental release inside EA with bethesda.

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Except that you never participated in an experimental release inside EA with bethesda.

 

No one did lol but the point still stands, Bethesda has more good things than bad things and those good things just work the way that is acceptable by majority of players who like games from Bethesda in the first place.

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Just like modders fixing the game you just did the pimps' job. This is absolutely highly in their interest that they do this themselves. It's amazing that they are not trying to actually find out what people think. If they don't want to know - then they are just like every other developer *cough Bethesda*. If they didn't realize that they should ask these kinds of questions right now, then they need to get their act together as a company!

 

Cudos enragedcamel, good survey!

 

The issue is, TFP isnt really interested in players opinions, they have their own game in mind. Ofcourse they like input on what they bring, but thats about it. Someone brought up Empyrion devs who do these surveys (and I can confirm they do it A LOT), but Emp devs actually build the game based on players input. Emp in its current state is exactly made on the primary wishes of the playerbase from past surveys.

The thing with surveys being done by developers is, they are forcing themselves to develop according to that outcome.. something TFP/Madmole wouldnt like.

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The issue is, TFP isnt really interested in players opinions, they have their own game in mind. Ofcourse they like input on what they bring, but thats about it. Someone brought up Empyrion devs who do these surveys (and I can confirm they do it A LOT), but Emp devs actually build the game based on players input. Emp in its current state is exactly made on the primary wishes of the playerbase from past surveys.

The thing with surveys being done by developers is, they are forcing themselves to develop according to that outcome.. something TFP/Madmole wouldnt like.

 

To be fair, I like the idea behind Empyrion, but I never understood the mechanics it uses. I guess your post partially explains why. Many people with different opinions trying to pull it more towards their own vision will simply tear it all apart in the end, if the developers wanted to make everyone happy. That's simply impossible, but what they could do is to try their best to find some sweet spot between all those visions, find some nice balance, take the best of all worlds so to speak and come up with the most intuitive and best possible result of that mixture, but never overdo things to the point that they no longer make sense.

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To be fair, I like the idea behind Empyrion, but I never understood the mechanics it uses. I guess your post partially explains why. Many people with different opinions trying to pull it more towards their own vision will simply tear it all apart in the end, if the developers wanted to make everyone happy. That's simply impossible, but what they could do is to try their best to find some sweet spot between all those visions, find some nice balance, take the best of all worlds so to speak and come up with the most intuitive and best possible result of that mixture, but never overdo things to the point that they no longer make sense.

 

Well thats basicly what they did over there. I visit many game forums and the EMp one is one of the happiest gaming communities I know.

 

But enough about that, this is 7 days. I just wish they would have done such surveys in the past, now we got a fallout voxel clone and no more awesome RWG or mining.

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Well thats basicly what they did over there. I visit many game forums and the EMp one is one of the happiest gaming communities I know.

 

But enough about that, this is 7 days. I just wish they would have done such surveys in the past, now we got a fallout voxel clone and no more awesome RWG or mining.

 

They actually did such surveys in the past for much smaller changes they wanted to implement and everyone was happy about the result, players picked the best solutions offered by the developers in the poll and both the players and developers were happy in the end, I don't know why they didn't do the same when they wanted to do such big changes for Alpha 17. The only explanation is that they were confident that the changes will be seen mostly positively. Apparently the unofficial poll so far shows that the changes are a mixed bag.

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I really love A17 in general, it's really good. The only things I want to change really are:-

 

1. Bringing back the wood log spikes, just make them so they can't be rotated and only placed on the ground or something

2. I would increase gun damage

3. I would set back the gamestages a bit, cops and ferals on day 14 is too much, day 21 would be better imho

4. I would decrease the amount of meat required to make food a little, maybe to 2 or 3 perhaps

5. And I definitely would remove the buffs the zombies have against blocks, or at least lower them because the new AI makes these buffs OP - in A16 with steel pillars I still had to actively defend my base. The AI is amazing imo, but with the increased damage they do against a single block it's too much. This will also make wood huts better on the first few nights.

6. Add a perk to decrease stamina drain when using heavy armor

7. Add a stealth lock picking perk - there's a modlet for this which is really good, it should be part of the main game.

 

Also I want the performance to improve, the dips especially where it will stutter down to 15fps or something before going back up to normal levels are odd like it's trying to load something I guess.

 

But mostly as you can see, it's just balancing changes and bugs/performance fixed - that's it really. The game itself is a vast improvement on previous alphas.

 

Also note I've played this non-stop aside from working since it came out, so have quite a few hours in A17 now.

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There seems to be a boatload of new threads about A17. To add an alternative, more structured way of collecting feedback, I created this survey:

 

https://goo.gl/forms/Cs66bbZ0dz6klyqB3

 

(Requires sign in to limit each person to 1 submission.)

 

I hope the results prove useful to the devs.

 

I don't like this survey. Some of the questions are unanswerable. For example: "What are your thoughts on the new stamina/health system" - survey options: like, dislike and no opinion. I cannot choose either one of those answers because I like the idea but it needs severe rebalancing. Sorry, I won't answer a survey that will portray my opinion as something that it is not.

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I don't like this survey. Some of the questions are unanswerable. For example: "What are your thoughts on the new stamina/health system" - survey options: like, dislike and no opinion. I cannot choose either one of those answers because I like the idea but it needs severe rebalancing. Sorry, I won't answer a survey that will portray my opinion as something that it is not.

 

I admit that questions like "what are your thoughts on this or that" are not exactly worded properly if you can give only simple answers consisting of couple of simple words that don't say much - so how you can describe your thoughts by saying "like" or "dislike"? Things are never either positive or negative and nothing between, so if answering by using those simple options available isn't enough, I simply choose the option that says "no opinion", the rest of my answers reflect my most dominant feelings about the topics in question.

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